The Guardians

<h4><span><strong>Morgan MacGregor is a reader and writer living in Los Angeles. She&rsquo;s working on a novel, and plans to open a bookstore called Dead or Alive.</strong><br /></span></h4>

Morgan Macgregor

A Revelatory Requiem for a Mentally Ill Friend

The Interrogative Mood

The Crying of Lot 49

Gravity's Rainbow

The Shadow Year

The Physiognomy

The Drowned Life

The Plot Against America

Jane Eyre

Ulysses

The Remains of the Day

Song of Solomon

Devils, Drugs, and Doctors

The Day of the Locust

Miss Lonelyhearts

The Dream Life of Balso Snell

A Cool Million

The Sisters Brothers

Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear (Vol. 1)

The Divine Comedy

The Red and the Black

Stories from the Twilight Zone

Catch-22

Moby Dick

<strong>Dinah Lenney&nbsp;is&nbsp;the author of&nbsp;<em>The Object Parade</em>&nbsp;(2014) and&nbsp;<em>Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir&nbsp;</em>(2007), and co-editor of <em>Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction&nbsp;</em>(co-editor, 2015). She serves as core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars, and as an editor-at-large for&nbsp;<em>LARB.&nbsp;</em>Her latest book is&nbsp;<em>Coffee</em> (Bloomsbury, 2020).</strong>

Dinah Lenney

<h4><b>Antoine Wilson </b>is the author of the novels <i>Panorama City</i> (forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the fall of 2012) and <i>The Interloper</i> (Other Press, 2007). He is a contributing editor of <i>A Public Space</i> and <i>Los Angeles Review of Books</i>. He lives and surfs in Los Angeles.</h4>
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Antoine Wilson

Matt Weiland

<h4><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.4em;">Padgett Powell teaches in the MFA@FLA. He has six or eight books to his name and several stories. One of them is that he keeps chickens.</span></h4>

Padget Powell

<h4>Chris Kraus is the author of four novels and two books of art and cultural criticism.  <em>After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography</em>, is her most recent book.</h4>

Chris Kraus

<strong>Cullen Gallagher lives in Brooklyn, New York. His writing has appeared in many publications including the&nbsp;<i>Paris Review</i>,&nbsp;<i>Brooklyn Rail</i>, and&nbsp;<i>Not Coming to a Theater Near You</i>,&nbsp;as well as in the anthologies&nbsp;<i>Cult&nbsp;Cinema: An Arrow Video Companion</i>&nbsp;(2016), edited by Anthony Nield, and&nbsp;<i>Screen Slate: New York City&nbsp;Cinema&nbsp;2011–2015&nbsp;</i>(2017), edited by Jon Dieringer. He blogs about crime fiction at&nbsp;<i>Pulp Serenade</i>&nbsp;(<a id="LPlnk210499" href="http://www.pulp-serenade.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable">www.pulp-serenade.com</a>).</strong>

Cullen Gallagher

<h4>Mark Haskell Smith&nbsp;is the author of&nbsp;<i>Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup</i>, <i>Baked</i>,&nbsp;<i>Raw: A Love Story</i>, <i>Blown,&nbsp;</i>and other books. His latest is <em>Rude Talk in Athens: Ancient Rivals, the Birth of Comedy, and a Writer’s Journey through Greece</em> (Unnamed, 2021). He is an associate professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center.</h4>

Mark Haskell Smith

<h4><b>Jane Smiley</b> is the author, most recently, of <i>Private Life</i> and <i>A Good Horse</i>.</h4>

Jane Smiley

Ben Loory

<h4><strong>Meghan Daum&nbsp;has been a weekly Op-Ed columnist at the<em>&nbsp;Los Angeles Times</em>&nbsp;since 2005. Her latest book,&nbsp;<em>Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House</em>, is now out in paperback.&nbsp;</strong></h4>

Meghan Daum

<strong>Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of four novels, including&nbsp;<a href="https://lailalalami.com/the-moors-account/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The Moor’s Account</em></a>, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel,&nbsp;<a href="https://lailalalami.com/the-other-americans/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The Other Americans</em></a>, was a national best seller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, the&nbsp;<em>Washington Post</em>,&nbsp;<em>The Nation</em>,&nbsp;<em>Harper’s</em>, the&nbsp;<em>Guardian</em>, and the&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>. She has received fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a full professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles. Her new book, a work of nonfiction called&nbsp;<a href="https://lailalalami.com/conditional-citizens/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Conditional Citizens</em></a>, was published by Pantheon in September 2020.&nbsp;</strong>

Laila Lalami

<h4><b>Sesshu Foster&nbsp;</b><span>has taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 20 years, and writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz and Naropa University&rsquo;s Summer Writing Program. His most recent books are the novel&nbsp;</span><i>Atomik Aztex</i><span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><i>World Ball Notebook</i><span>. He is currently collaborating with artist Arturo Romo and other writers on the website,&nbsp;</span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.elaguide.org/">www.ELAguide.org</a><span>.</span></h4>

Sesshu Foster

Mary Otis

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<h4>Ayelet Waldman, formerly a lawyer,&nbsp;is a novelist and essayist.</h4>
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Ayelet Waldman

<h4>Stephen Elliott is the writer/director of the web series&nbsp;<em>Driven</em>.&nbsp;He is the the author of eight books&nbsp;including the novel&nbsp;<em>Happy Baby</em>, and the memoir<em>&nbsp;The Adderall Diaries&nbsp;</em>which was adapted into a&nbsp;feature film starring James Franco. His article&nbsp;<em>Silicon Is Just Sand&nbsp;</em>is being developed for a series at&nbsp;A&amp;E.</h4>
<h4>His first movie, <em>About Cherry</em>, premiered at the Berlinale and was released by IFC in 2012. His&nbsp;newest movie,&nbsp;<em>After Adderall</em>, was the closing night film for the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival.</h4>

Stephen Elliott

<h4>Julie Cline is a former editor at the <em>Los Angeles Review of Books.</em> Her essays and reviews have appeared here and there. She is writing a nonfiction novel. </h4>
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Julie Cline

<h4><span style="line-height: 1.5;">Gary Phillips has authored more than a dozen crime and mystery novels, including <a href="http://downandoutbooks.com/2016/02/08/new-from-down-out-books-3-the-hard-way-by-gary-phillips/"><em>3 the Hard Way</em></a>, a compilation of some of his hard-boiled pulpy characters, has a short story in the <em>Black Noir </em>collection that includes Hughes Allison’s “Corollary,” and was co-editor of the bestselling <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/souljahs-of-fortune-on-black-pulp"><em>Black Pulp</em></a> anthology. </span></h4>

Gary Phillips

<h4>Sven Birkerts edits the journal AGNI at Boston University and directs the Bennington Writing Seminars. His most recent book is <em>Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age </em>(Graywolf).</h4>

Sven Birkerts

<h4>Ben Ehrenreich is the author of <em>The Suitors</em> and <em>Ether</em>. His next book, <em>The Way to the Spring</em>, which is based on his reporting from the West Bank, will be published in June by Penguin Press.</h4>

Ben Ehrenreich

The Ghost of Books: Past, Present, and Future

<span>Morgan MacGregor is a reader and writer living in Los Angeles. She&rsquo;s working on a novel, and plans to open a bookstore called Dead or Alive.<br /></span>