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Featured Authors for 2013
View Comments from Past Participating Authors
Celeste Fremon
Celeste Fremon is the editor and creator of WitnessLA, an online source for criminal justice reporting. She is also an
award-winning freelance journalist specializing in gangs, law enforcement, criminal justice and education policy. She has written G-Dog and the Homeboys, and is working on a new book, An American Family, about the life of a parolee following
prison release. Celeste is a senior fellow for social justice/new media at the Institute for Justice and Journalism, Visiting Lecturer at UC Irvine, and adjunct professor at the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC.
www.witnessla.com
Attica Locke
Attica Locke’s latest novel, The Cutting Season, is a murder mystery set on an antebellum Louisiana plantation. With her rare gift for depicting the complexities of human nature, she explores the black experience in recent American history and demonstrates once again that she is “destined for literary stardom” (Dallas Morning News). Attica’s first novel, Black Water Rising, was short-listed for the Orange Prize and nominated for an LA Times Book Prize, an Edgar Award, and an NAACP Image Award.
www.atticalocke.com
M.G. Lord
Almost 20 years ago, author and critic M.G. Lord published Forever Barbie, a look at America’s fascination with Mattel’s Barbie doll. Her 2012 book, The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice, is described by the LA Times as “...a witty love story of American pop culture.” Before becoming a freelance writer, M.G. was a syndicated political cartoonist at Newsday. She is currently a lecturer in the Professional Writing Program at USC
www.mglord.com
Demetria Martinez
Author, activist and journalist Demetria Martinez’s novel, Mother Tongue, is based in part on her 1988 trial for conspiracy against the US government for allegedly transporting Salvadoran refugees into the country. It won a Western States Book Award for Fiction. Demetria was found not guilty on First Amendment grounds. Her autobiographical essays, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana, won the 2006 International Latino Book Award. She was honored with the Luis Leal Award Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature in 2011.
www.demetriamartinez.com
Aimee Phan
In her first book, We Should Never Meet, Aimee Phan explores the transitions of Vietnamese refugees settling in Orange County’s Little Saigon; her second, The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, is a sensitive story of Vietnamese family loyalties, secrets, and history. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and USA Today, among others. A 2010 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, Aimee received her MFA from the University of Iowa and currently teaches writing at the California College of the Arts.
www.aimeephan.com
Elyn Saks
Specializing in mental health and criminal law, Elyn Saks’ work has focused on the ethics of psychiatric research and forced treatment of the mentally ill. In her memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, she beautifully and honestly describes her struggles and successes with schizophrenia and asserts that no one suffering from any mental or physical disorder should be stigmatized. She is currently Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at USC Gould School of Law.
(no website presently listed)
Amy Wilentz
is a journalist, novelist and editor whose works have appeared in the NY Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and many other publications. Her newest book is Farewell Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti (2013). Amy is the winner of the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN Martha Albrand Non-Fiction Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, and was a 1990 nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches in the Literary
Journalism program at UC Irvine.
www.amywilentz.com
