Reagan Arthur is Vice President and Editorial Director of Reagan Arthur Books, an imprint of Little, Brown. She began her publishing career at St. Martin’s Press, and also worked for Picador USA. Writers she has worked with since arriving at Little, Brown include Kate Atkinson, Kate Braestrup, Tony Earley, Joshua Ferris, Elin Hilderbrand, Elizabeth Kostova, Denise Mina, George Pelecanos, Josh Bazell, Kathleen Kent, and Joanna Scott. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
2024 NF & Memoir
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won a Medal in Nonfiction from the California Book Awards. It was also a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and was long-listed for a Carnegie Medal in Excellence in Nonfiction. It was named a “Best Book of the Year” by TIME, People, NPR, Vanity Fair, and the Boston Globe, among others. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor’s choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, and ZYZZYVA. [F/NF] ingridrojascontreras.com
Alex Espinoza’s (’04, ’05) debut novel, Still Water Saints, was published to wide critical acclaim. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was the winner of a 2014 American Book Award. He is the author of the nonfiction book Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime and has written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, VQR, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR. His short story “Detainment” was selected for inclusion in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories. His latest novel is The Sons of El Rey (Simon and Schuster, June 2024). Alex lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair and Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.
Formerly a Senior Editor at Little, Brown and Company, where she worked for ten years, Jean Garnett is now a freelance editor and writer. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, the Yale Review, andon the New Yorker website. She has been twice notable in Best American Essays and is the winner of a Pushcart Prize.
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. Her novel, Catching Heaven, is a Willa Award finalist. Her award-winning essays and stories have appeared in such journals as Alta Journal, New England Review, Iowa Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She co-directs the Nonfiction/Memoir program at the Community of Writers. sandshall.com [F/NF/M]
Photo Credit: Tracy Hall
Rachel Howard is the author of a novel, The Risk of Us, and a memoir, The Lost Night. Her stories and essays have appeared in StoryQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. She served as Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow and Interim Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College and teaches nonfiction and novel writing at Stanford Continuing Studies. For more than 20 years she has written dance criticism for the San Francisco Chronicle. [F/NF] rachelhoward.com
Photo Credit: Emmet Cullen
Kirby Kim has worked for Charlotte Sheedy Literary, Vigliano Associates, WME, and Janklow & Nesbit. He represents both literary and commercial authors. He’s most interested in receiving manuscripts that straddle the fence bit, with upmarket expression combined with a genre element or plot device. His commercial interests include thrillers, mysteries, and speculative fiction. He also represents a range of nonfiction, working with leaders and journalists in the areas of science, culture, business, and current affairs. Some of his clients include award-winning science fiction writer Ted Chiang, Edgar winner James A. McLaughlin, Bloomberg Business Week journalist Lauren Etter, rapper/actor Common, two-time National Book Award winner in the Philippines Gina Apostol, and debut novelists Ling Ling Huang and Adam White. Kirby is currently a board member of the Asian American Writers Workshop.
Keenan Norris is a novelist, essayist and scholar. His latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane, the winner of the 2022 Northern California Book Award. His essays have garnered the 2021-22 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award in Music, Theater and Performing Arts and the 2021 Folio: Eddie Award. His other books include the non-fiction work Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings and his debut novel Brother and the Dancer, which received the James D. Houston Award in 2012. Keenan has served as Lannan Visiting Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts (2023) and Rea Visiting Writer at the University of Virginia (2021). Since 2022, he’s served as coordinator of the Steinbeck Fellows Program at San Jose State University. In 2025, he became Areas Editor (nonfiction) for Callaloo Literary Journal. His feature pieces and articles have appeared in numerous forums, including The Nation, Alta Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, TED-ED, and ZYZZYVA, while his short fiction has been published in several anthologies of California literature. He is an Associate Professor at San Jose State University. keenannorris.com [F/NF/M]
Photo: Akubundu Amazu-Lott
Jason Roberts is a writer of nonfiction and fiction. His most recent book, Every Living Thing, was honored with the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for biography, as well as the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing award. His previous book, A Sense of the World, was a national bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the international Guardian First Book Award. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers, and lives in Oakland and Montreal. [F/NF]
Photo Credit: Christopher Michel
Martin J. Smith is the author of five crime novels and five nonfiction books including Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads, a finalist for a 2022 Colorado Book Award. The veteran journalist and magazine editor has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards, and his novels have been short-listed for three of the publishing industry’s most prestigious honors, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award. He is a former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine and Orange Coast Magazine. [F/NF] martinjsmith.com
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
Tom Zoellner is the author of eight nonfiction books including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Bancroft Prize. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy and many other places. He teaches at Chapman University and Dartmouth College and also serves as an editor-at-large for The Los Angeles Review of Books. [NF] tomzoellner.com