<h4>Cristina Alger graduated from Harvard College in 2002 and from New York University School of Law in 2007. She has worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs &amp; Co. and as an attorney at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale &amp; Dorr. She lives in New York City, where she was born and raised. The Darlings is her first novel, and she is currently working on her next book.</h4>

Cristina Alger

The Darlings

Erica Jong&nbsp;is the author of eight novels including&nbsp;Fear of Flying, nonfiction works such as&nbsp;Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir and The Devil at Large, a study of Henry Miller, and several volumes of poetry.

Erica Jong

Fear of Flying

<h4>Daniel Alarcón is the author if the story collection War by Candlelight and the novels Lost City Radio and At Night We Walk in Circles. He is co-founder of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish-language storytelling podcast, and currently serves as a Fellow in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism.</h4>

Daniel Alarcón

At Night We Walk in Circles

<h4>Michael LaPointe is a writer and critic in Toronto, Canada. He contributes to the Times Literary Supplement and writes a monthly literary essay for The Walrus.</h4>

Michael LaPointe

<h4>Dina Gachman's comedic blog about the economic divide, Bureaucracy for Breakfast, has been featured on NPR and Chelsea Handler's Borderline Amazing Comedy. Her writing has appeared in Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, The Hairpin, Ask Men, and Glamour. She's written comic books about Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, both published by Bluewater Comics. You can find her on <a href="https://twitter.com/theelf26" target="_blank">Twitter @TheElf26</a>.  </h4>

Dina Gachman

<h4 class="p1">Arne De Boever teaches American Studies in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, where he also directs the MA Aesthetics and Politics program. He is the author of States of Exception in the Contemporary Novel (2012) and Narrative Care (2013) and editor of Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (2012) and The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism: Vol. 1 (2013). He edits Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy and the critical theory/philosophy section of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also a member of the boundary 2 collective and an Advisory Editor for the Oxford Literary Review.</h4>

Arne De Boever

Fiction: New & Noteworthy

<h4>Diane Mehta is a writer in Brooklyn. Follow her at @DianeMehta.</h4>

Diane Mehta

The Upside-Down Diagonal World of "Sea of Hooks"

LARB

Fiction: New &amp; Noteworthy

<h4>Elissa Schappell is an American novelist, short story writer, editor and essayist. Her first book of fiction, Use Me a collection of ten linked short stories, was published in 2000 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morrow_and_Company">William Morrow</a>, and was a finalist for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEN/Hemingway_Award">PEN/Hemingway Award</a>. She is the co-founder of the literary magazine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_House">Tin House</a> and Editor-at-Large. She was previously a Senior Editor at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paris_Review">The Paris Review</a>. Schappell has co-edited two anthologies of essays <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Friend_Who_Got_Away">The Friend Who Got Away</a>, published in 2005 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubleday_(publisher)">Doubleday</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Changes_Everything">Money Changes Everything</a>, published in 2007 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubleday_(publisher)">Doubleday</a>. She is a Contributing-editor at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_Fair_(magazine)">Vanity Fair</a>, and author of the "Hot Type" book column.A second book of fiction, Blueprints for Building Better Girls, was published by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Schuster">Simon &amp; Schuster</a> in 2011.</h4>

Elissa Schappell

<h4>Kyle McCarthy is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers&rsquo; Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.</h4>

Kyle McCarthy

LARB Honors 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature Winner Alice Munro

<h4>Roger Bellin has a Ph.D. from Princeton and until recently taught American literature at Tulane. He is working on a book about the American Transcendentalists and the refusal to argue in literature and Continental philosophy. He also co-hosts <a href="http://thesometime.com/seminar/">The Sometime Seminar</a>, a podcast of critical discussion about literature and culture.</h4>

Roger Bellin

A Strange Allegory: JM Coetzee’s "The Childhood of Jesus"

<div>

Daniel Olivas, a second-generation Angeleno, is a playwright and the author of 10 books including, most recently, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Date-Flying-Mexican-Collected/dp/1647790360/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0">How to Date a Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories</a>&nbsp;(University of Nevada Press), and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Border-Collected-Daniel-Olivas/dp/0991261283/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="1">Crossing the Border: Collected Poems</a>&nbsp;(Pact Press). He is the editor of the&nbsp;anthology&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Latinos-Lotusland-Contemporary-California-Literature/dp/1931010471/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="2">Latinos in Lotusland</a>&nbsp;(Bilingual Press), and co-editor of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Coiled-Serpent-Arising-Cultural-Angeles/dp/188268852X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="3">The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles</a>&nbsp;(Tía Chucha Press). His first full-length play,&nbsp;<a href="https://newplayexchange.org/plays/524129/waiting-god%C3%ADnez" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="4">Waiting for Godínez</a>, was selected&nbsp;for the Playwrights' Arena&nbsp;Summer Reading Series, and The Road Theatre's&nbsp;12th Annual Summer Playwrights Festival, and was a&nbsp;Semi-Finalist for the American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Widely anthologized, he has also written for the&nbsp;New York Times,&nbsp;Los Angeles Times,&nbsp;The Guardian,&nbsp;Alta Journal,&nbsp;Jewish Journal,&nbsp;LARB,&nbsp;La Bloga, and many other print and online publications. By day,&nbsp;Olivas&nbsp;is an attorney in the Public Rights Division of the California Department of Justice. He and his wife make their home in Southern California, and they have an adult son.

</div>

Daniel A. Olivas

Three Questions for Daniel Alarcón

Greg Cwik has written for Reverse Shot, Mubi Notebook, Slant, The Brooklyn Rail, Vulture, and elsewhere.