Los Altos High School

 

 

 

Matt Abrahams is a leading expert in communication with decades of experience as an educator, author, podcast host, and coach. As a Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting. His new book Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously, such as navigating Q&A sessions, shining in job interviews, providing effective feedback, making small talk, fixing faux pas, persuading others. His previous book Speaking Up without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting has helped thousands of people manage speaking anxiety and present more confidently and authentically.

 

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 is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and Tony-nominated theatrical producer. A leading voice for the human rights of immigrants, he founded the non-profit narrative change organization Define American, named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the USA Today bestselling, Compton Crook Award-nominated author of The Splinter in the Sky, This World Is Not Yours, The King Must Die, and several short stories. She studied integrative biology and astrophysics at Harvard, and is now pursuing a PhD in Earth & Planetary Sciences at Stanford.

 

Alison (Al) Carpenter Davis is a writer, editor, and disability advocate drawn to hidden stories, the power of words to connect, and the commonality in being human. Her essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Des Moines Register, the HuffPost, Stanford Magazine, and the International Herald Tribune, among others. Al’s book Letters Home from Stanford came out in 2017, and looks at the heritage, history, and shared experience of college students everywhere. Formerly an editor at Outside magazine and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Al is at work on a memoir about her 50-year journey with Crohn’s disease. During the pandemic, she co-founded the Disability at Stanford Oral History Project to record Stanford’s cross-generational history of disability advocacy and the lived experience of those in the Stanford community with disabilities. Al and her husband, a teacher at Saratoga High School, live in Los Gatos in a house where three children and their dog once grew.  

 

 

 

 

 

Optional further reading: the unpublished, original opening to Loveboat Reunion (please see novel for the final version)

Ann Jacobus is the author of YA novels Romancing the Dark in the City of Light, winner of the Housatonic Book Award for Young Adult Literature, and The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent, as well as short stories, articles, essays, and poetry. She graduated from Dartmouth College, earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is a mental health advocate and a former volunteer crisis line counselor at San Francisco Suicide Prevention. She loves teaching writers of all ages and divides her time between California and Massachusetts with her family.

 

Imran J. Khan is an award-winning Pakistani-American writer and filmmaker. His short films, including PROM, have screened at major film festivals, been broadcast on national television and have been awarded Vimeo Staff Pick. His debut feature, MUSTACHE, premiered in competition at SXSW in 2023, where it won the Audience Award. Imran has an editing background; on the TV side, IWAJU for Disney+ and DISENCHANTMENT for Netflix; and on the feature side, SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY, MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU; and the critically acclaimed documentary SHIRKERS. He is a graduate of NYU’S MFA Film Production program and a San Francisco Bay Area native who began his filmmaking journey at the University of California, Davis making viral internet sketch videos in his spare time while pursuing a degree in Biological Systems Engineering.

 

 

Nikki Kashani is a first-generation Iranian American writer who was born and raised in Los Altos, California. She received her B.F.A. in film and television production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2017. During her time at USC, Kashani interned at several entertainment companies such as Funny or Die, Broadway Video, Comedy Central and Disney’s Digital Media Studios, where she was able to absorb the full spectrum of the creative process in real world settings. Upon graduating, Kashani secured a writers’ PA role on HBO’s “Watchmen” and fell in love with the ensemble dynamic of a writers’ room. Following her time on the prestige drama, Kashani became a showrunner’s assistant on the Amazon thriller “The Terminal List", then moved to the Russo Brothers' AGBO,  where she reported directly to the two Co-Presidents of Story. 

 

 

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.

 

 

Read Jane's work here 

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’s debut novel, All the Right Notes, has been named a 2023 best book by USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, Goodreads, BookRiot, Library Journal, Booklist, and Entertainment Weekly, who called it “a swoony, joyful rom-com to take readers into a love story worthy of a Broadway stage.” He is a member of the Writers Grotto and is a co-host of the long-running Babylon Salon reading and performance series in San Francisco. Dominic holds a Master of Music from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, is an alum of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, and has sung with numerous professional early music and choral ensembles. As a proud member of the Actors’ Equity Association he has performed Off-Broadway and in regional productions throughout the US. He works as a paralegal for a biotech company in the Bay Area and lives in Oakland with his loving and supportive husband, Peter, and their whiny cat, Phoebe.

Beth Lisick is a writer and actor from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently living in the Hudson Valley. She is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody Into the Pool, and co-founder of the Porchlight Storytelling Series. Beth has also worked as a baker, a promotional banana mascot, a background extra for TV and film, and an aide to people with developmental disabilities and dementia. Edie on the Green Screen is her first novel.

Jason Mastrodonato is a Bay Area News Group reporter covering the Giants, Warriors, 49ers and more for The Mercury News and East Bay Times. He specializes in human interest, feature and enterprise stories and is a regular contributor to the Mercury News magazine. A Northeastern University graduate, Jason began his journalism career at the Boston Globe in 2009. He went on to spend 12 years traveling the country on the Red Sox beat for MLB.com, MassLive.com and the Boston Herald before he joined the Bay Area News Group in 2023. He's a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America and votes for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. 

 

Christine Moore grew up in rural Northern California surrounded by nature. Her childhood was spent primarily outdoors, where she learned the joy and fragility of life. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of San Francisco and has written professionally for more than 20 years. She is a mom, wife, journalist, a Poet Teacher through California Poets in the Schools, and facilitator of a women’s group in her community. She loves a crowded dinner table with lots of lingering and loud laughter.

 

Read Christine's work here and interview here

Sean Patrick Small is an actor, writer, director, and producer based out of Los Angeles. He is most recently known for his portrayal as Larry Bird on HBO's hit show Winning Time. Sean has won a best actor award at the LA Live Film Festival and was nominated in others for his role in the short film, The Just. Sean has acted, written, produced, and directed various shorts, pilots, and feature films. He is currently shopping multiple scripts, and is looking forward to bringing more creative storytelling to a screen soon.

 

 

Mitali Perkins (mitaliperkins.com) has written many books for young readers, including Between Us and Abuela (2020 Charlotte Huck Honor Book), Forward Me Back To You (SLJ and Kirkus Best YA Books of 2019), You Bring the Distant Near (nominated for a National Book Award, six starred reviews), and Rickshaw Girl (adapted into a film by Sleeperwave Productions), all of which explore crossing different kinds of borders. Mitali also writes about light topics like poverty, immigration, child soldiers, microcredit, and human trafficking, thanks to living overseas for many years and studying Political Science at Stanford and Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley. Her goal in fiction is to make readers laugh or cry, preferably both, as long as their hearts are widening. She lives and writes in the East Bay.

 

 

Jessica Powell is the author of  The Big Disruption: A Totally Fictional But Essentially True Silicon Valley Story, described by the New York Times as “a zany satire whose diagnosis of Silicon Valley’s cultural stagnancy is so spot on that it’s barely contestable.” Jessica is the former Vice President of Communications for Google and served on the company's management team. She is the author of Literary Paris, and her fiction and non-fiction have been published in TIME, The New York Times, VICE, WIRED, Fast Company, and elsewhere. She is also the co-founder and CEO of AudioShake, an A.I. startup that builds sound separation software to help make audio more accessible and interactive.

Yasmeen Serhan is a London-based staff writer at TIME Magazine, where she covers foreign affairs across Europe and the Middle East, with a focus on democracy and authoritarianism. She is a regular contributor on the British political podcast Oh God, What Now? and makes frequent appearances on Sky News, the BBC, and other broadcasters.

 

 

Parini Shroff received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied under Elizabeth McCracken, Alexander Chee, and Cristina García. She is a practicing attorney and currently lives in the Bay Area. The Bandit Queens is her debut novel.

 

Danna Staaf is a science communicator and marine biologist who earned a PhD from Stanford University with her studies of baby squid. Her writing has appeared in Smithsonian, Science, and Nautilus, and she is the author of Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods (named one of Science Friday's best science books of the year), The Lady and the Octopus: How Jeanne Villepreux-Power Invented Aquariums and Revolutionized Marine Biology (a best book of the year of the School Library Journal and the Children's Book Committee), and Nursery Earth: The Wondrous Lives of Baby Animals and the Extraordinary Ways They Shape Our World (hailed as "a gobsmacking delight!"). Her newest book is The Lives of Octopuses and their Relatives: A Natural History of Cephalopods. Staaf lives in San Jose, California, with her husband, children, cat, and innumerable plush octopuses.

 

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 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.