LAHS Writers Week
![Writers Week](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week Logo.jpg)
Los Altos High School is proud to announce Writers Week, taking place from March 12th through March 15th, 2024
Since 1985 writers have come to our English classes to speak about their individual work as well as the life and craft of a writer. Here are just a few of the amazing speakers we are happy to host this year.
![One Giant Leap Porchlight](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/One-Giant-Leap-Web-Banner-Big.png)
Matt Abrahams
Matt Abrahams![]()
Matt Abrahams
![Matt Abrahams](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/matt-abrahams-presentation.jpg)
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS![]()
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
![A woman with pink hair](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Charlie Jane Anders 2021.jpg)
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young adult Unstoppable trilogy: Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness. She's also the author of Never Say You Can't Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she's currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post.
Jose Antonio Vargas
Jose Antonio Vargas![]()
Jose Antonio Vargas
![jose antonio](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/jav-headshot-2020.jpg)
His best-selling memoir, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, was published by HarperCollins in 2018. His second book, White Is Not a Country, will be published by Knopf in 2025.
In 2019, he co-produced Heidi Schreck’s acclaimed Broadway play What the Constitution Means to Me, which was nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Play" and is streamable on Amazon Prime Video. His second Broadway production, a staging of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim's musical Here Lies Love, opened at the Broadway Theatre in July 2023.
MVHS Alumnus!
Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Kemi Ashing-Giwa![]()
Kemi Ashing-Giwa
![Kemi Ashing-Giwa](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/images.jpg)
Donia Bijan
Donia Bijan![]()
Donia Bijan
![Donia Bijan](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Bijan-Donia-photo.jpg)
Alison Carpenter Davis
Alison Carpenter Davis![]()
Alison Carpenter Davis
![Alison Davis](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Photos/Davis-Alison-Carpenter-LowRes-BW-2019.jpg)
YANGSZE CHOO
YANGSZE CHOO![]()
YANGSZE CHOO
![A smiling woman in front of a bush](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Yangsze_Choo2018-19.jpg)
Yangsze Choo is the NYTimes bestselling author of THE GHOST BRIDE (a CILIP Carnegie nominee, Oprah.com's best book of the week, and now a Netflix Original series which was just released Jan 23) and THE NIGHT TIGER, (Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club Pick, Amazon's Spotlight Pick, and a Book of the Month Club selection, as well as one of the best books of the year for Amazon, The Washington Review of Books, Bookpage, Chicago Public Library, Los Angeles Public Library, Parade, Real Simple, and Self Magazine). After graduating from Harvard, she worked as a management consultant while writing fiction on a coffee table at home in her spare time. Originally from Malaysia, she spent part of her childhood in Germany and Japan, and now lives in California with her family and several chickens. Yangsze loves to eat and read, and often does both at the same time. Neither of her books would have been possible without large quantities of dark chocolate.
ABIGAIL HING-WEN
ABIGAIL HING-WEN![]()
ABIGAIL HING-WEN
![Abigail Hing Wen](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Photos/Abigail Hing Wen.jpg)
Abigail Hing Wen is the New York Times Best Selling Author of Loveboat, Taipei and the recently released companion novel, Loveboat Reunion ad Loveboat Forever (forthcoming November 2023). She is executive producer for the Loveboat, Taipei film, starring Ross Butler and Ashley Liao, which wrapped production in Taipei in 2022. Abigail holds a BA from Harvard, a JD from Columbia Law School, and an MFA from the Vermont School of Fine Arts. When she’s not writing stories or listening to her favorite scores, she is busy working in artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley, where she lives with her husband and two children.
Optional further reading: the unpublished, original opening to Loveboat Reunion (please see novel for the final version)
Joanna Ho
Joanna Ho![]()
Joanna Ho
![Joanna Ho](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Joanna Ho.png)
She is a writer and educator with a passion for anti-bias, anti-racism and equity work. She holds a BA in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a master’s from the Principal Leadership Institute at Berkeley. She has been an English teacher, a dean, the designer of an alternative-to-prison program, a creator of educator professional development, and a high school vice principal.
She lives in the Bay Area, where she survives on homemade chocolate chip cookies, outdoor adventures, and dance parties with her kids. Keep your eyes open for more books to come!
VANESSA HUA
VANESSA HUA![]()
VANESSA HUA
![A portrait of a woman smiling](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Vanessa Hua.jpg)
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, a California Arts Council Established Artist Fellowship, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
ANN JACOBUS
ANN JACOBUS![]()
ANN JACOBUS
![ann Jacobus](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/AJK-by-Marc-Olivier-Leblanc-full-size.jpeg)
Imran J. Khan
Imran J. Khan![]()
Imran J. Khan
![Imran Khan](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Imran-J-khan-Headshot.jpg)
LAHS Alumnus!
Malaina Miya Kapoor
Malaina Miya Kapoor![]()
Malaina Miya Kapoor
![malaina kapoor](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Malaina_Kapoor-headshot.jpeg)
Nikki Kashani
Nikki Kashani![]()
Nikki Kashani
![Nikki Kashani](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/Nikki-Kashani-Headshot-1.jpg)
Last year, Nikki was one of 12 writers selected to participate in the Disney Writing Program out of thousands of applicants. Two months into the program, she was staffed on Hulu's new show, DELI BOYS, where she got to co-write her first episode of television!
LAHS Alumna!
Jane Kuo
Jane Kuo![]()
Jane Kuo
![Jane Kuo](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/Jane-Kuo.jpg)
Jane Kuo is an Asian American writer who grew up in Los Angeles. Her books, In the Beautiful Country and Land of Broken Promises, are fictional stories inspired by the weekends and summers she spent working in her family’s fast food restaurant. Jane’s essays have appeared in the LA Times and Writer’s Digest. She is currently writing a memoir.
DEVI S. LASKAR
DEVI S. LASKAR![]()
DEVI S. LASKAR
![A smiling woman](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Devi_Laskar2020.jpg)
Devi S. Laskar is a poet, novelist, photographer, former newspaper reporter and lifelong TarHeel. She is the author of award-winningThe Atlas of Reds and Blues, which was named by The Washington Post as one of the 50 best books of 2019. Her second novel, Circa, was published in 2022 by Mariner Books and selected as a Goop Book Club and Book Club Girl pick. Her third novel, Midnight, At The War will be published by Mariner Books next year. She holds degrees from UNC - Chapel Hill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University. She now lives in the Bay Area.
Dominic Lim
Dominic Lim![]()
Dominic Lim
![Dominic Lin](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Dominic-Lim.jpg)
Beth Lisick
Beth Lisick![]()
Beth Lisick
![beth lisick](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Beth-Lisick.jpg)
SHEFALI LUTHRA
SHEFALI LUTHRA![]()
SHEFALI LUTHRA
![Shefail](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/shefali-l-2-2.jpeg)
Before joining The 19th, Luthra was a correspondent for the nonprofit newsroom Kaiser Health News. Her work at KHN received multiple prizes, including a Batten Medal and Headliner Award, and was published in outlets including The Guardian, NPR, The New York Times and The Washington Post. In 2019, she was selected for the Arthur Burns fellowship, through which she reported from Germany on alternative approaches to achieving universal health care, as well as access to contraception. A graduate of Los Altos High School and Brown University, she lives in Washington D.C.
LAHS Alumna!
JULIE LYthCOTT-HAIMS
JULIE LYthCOTT-HAIMS![]()
JULIE LYthCOTT-HAIMS
![Julie Lythcot-Haims](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Photos/Headshot-Julie-Lythcott-Haims.jpg)
Julie Lythcott-Haims believes in humans and is deeply interested in what gets in our way. Her work encompasses writing, speaking, teaching, mentoring, and activism.
She is the New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult which gave rise to a popular TED Talk. Her second book is the critically-acclaimed and award-winning prose poetry memoir Real American, which illustrates her experience as a Black and biracial person in white spaces. Her third book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, has been called a “groundbreakingly frank” guide to adulthood.
Julie holds degrees from Stanford, Harvard Law, and California College of the Arts. She currently serves on the boards of Common Sense Media, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Narrative Magazine, and on the Board of Trustees at California College of the Arts. She serves on the advisory boards of LeanIn.Org, Sir Ken Robinson Foundation and Baldwin For the Arts.
She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner of over thirty years, their itinerant young adults, and her mother.
Jason Mastrodonato
Jason Mastrodonato![]()
Jason Mastrodonato
![Jason mastrondonato](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Jason-Mastrondonato.jpg)
Katharine Mieszkowski
Katharine Mieszkowski![]()
Katharine Mieszkowski
![Katharine Mieszkowski](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/Katharine-Mieszkowski.jpg)
Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal, the public radio show and podcast produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting. Reveal airs on more than 600 stations nationwide every week, reaching more than a million listeners. Katharine's also been a senior writer for Salon and Fast Company. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Slate and on NPR's "All Things Considered."
Katharine reporting for Reveal has won every major broadcast journalism award, including the Peabody Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award two years in a row. Mieszkowski has a bachelor's degree from Yale University in Literature. Her husband Jim Fisher graduated from Los Altos High School in 1990. They have two daughters, ages 12 and 16, and live in Kensington.
Christine Moore
Christine Moore![]()
Christine Moore
![Christine Moore](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Christinemoore.png)
Sean Patrick Small
Sean Patrick Small![]()
Sean Patrick Small
![Sean Patrick Small](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/Sean-Patrick-Small.jpg)
LAHS Alumnus!
MITALI PERKINS
MITALI PERKINS![]()
MITALI PERKINS
![A laughing woman](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Mitali2_laugh.jpg)
KEN PONTAC
KEN PONTAC![]()
KEN PONTAC
![Ken Pontac](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/Ken-Pontac.jpg)
Jessica Powell
Jessica Powell![]()
Jessica Powell
![Jessica Powel](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Jessica-Powell.jpg)
YASMEEN SERHAN
YASMEEN SERHAN![]()
YASMEEN SERHAN
![Yasmin](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/ys-headshot-color.jpg)
Before joining TIME, Serhan was a staff writer at The Atlantic, which she joined in 2016 as an editorial fellow in Washington, D.C. She was dispatched to the U.K. the following year to launch the magazine’s London bureau, where she covered British and European politics at the height of Brexit before eventually shifting her focus to the rise of authoritarian-populist politics around the world.
Serhan graduated from Los Altos High School in 2012 and went on to study international relations and French at the University of Southern California. Her informal journalism education came from her time writing and editing for the university’s student-run newspaper of record, the Daily Trojan.
LAHS Alumna!
Parini Shroff
Parini Shroff![]()
Parini Shroff
![parini shroff](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Parini-Shroff-©-Devin-Spratt.jpg)
Sudnya Shroff
Sudnya Shroff![]()
Sudnya Shroff
![Sudnya](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2024/Sudnya.jpeg)
As a champion of the world’s distressed sisterhood, Sudnya has made it her life’s mission to tell stories — arrestingly beautiful and awe inspiring stories — those that have the power to transform our subconscious narratives of fear and scarcity to stories of love and abundance.
Danna Staaf
Danna Staaf![]()
Danna Staaf
![Donna Staaf](pictures/Writers Week/Writers Week 2023/Writers Week Author Photos 2023/Donna-Staaf.jpg)
JENN ALANDY TRAHAN
JENN ALANDY TRAHAN![]()
JENN ALANDY TRAHAN
![A smiling woman](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Trahan- Jenn Alandy photo 2020.jpg)
Jenn Alandy Trahan is a first-generation college graduate who received her BA in English from the University of California, Irvine and went on to receive both her MA in English and MFA in Fiction from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She is grateful for support from Carlisle Family Scholarships at the Community of Writers, the Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Laugarvatn, Iceland, the Writing Downtown residency in Las Vegas, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her work has appeared in Permafrost, Blue Mesa Review, Harper's, One Story, and the Best American Short Stories. A 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction, she's currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford teaching courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, creative expression, Pilipinx fiction and contemporary American short stories.
NORMAN ZELAYA
NORMAN ZELAYA![]()
NORMAN ZELAYA
![A man speaking at a podium](pictures/Student-Activities/Writers-Week/Zelaya.jpg)
Norman Zelaya has published stories in journals such as ZYZZYVA, Fourteen Hills and NY Tyrant. His work is reflective of his experiences growing up in the Mission during the 80s. He is currently a Special Education teacher.