Chiwan Choi is the author of two poetry collections, The Flood and Abductions. He is also Co-Founder and Editor of Writ Large Press, a downtown Los Angeles based literary small press.
Peter Clothier is a recovering academic whose blogs The Buddha Diaries and Persist: The Blog are now widely read. His most recent publication is Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce.
Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D. is an award-winning writer and educator interested in how people figure out who they are. She is currently Visiting Scholar at Brown University.
Jaz Dorsey is a native of Atlanta, Ga. He holds an undergraduate degree in International Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill and pioneered the graduate dramaturgy program at VCU in Richmond, Va. A playwright/composer/lyricist, Dorsey enjoyed a string of off off Broadway productions of his original musicals, including Cafe Escargot and Alice in America, in the 1990s. From 1990- 1997 he served as the production manager in the NYC offices of Biggs Rosati Productions. He is the founder of AAPEX (The African American Playwrights Exchange) and F.L.A.G.(The Foreign Language Acting Group) and currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.
Sylvie Drake is a translator, writer, poet and an acting and directing graduate of the Pasadena Playhouse who was born was born and grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. She joined the staff of the Los Angeles Times as a theatre columnist and critic in 1971, becoming chief critic from 1991-93. She is currently Director of Publications for The Denver Center for the Performing Arts as well as an advisor to the Denver Center Theatre Company.
Cynthia Ferrell is a Los Angeles playwright and librettist.
Donald Freed is one of America’s great theatre treasures, and our most profound playwright of politics and the human condition.
Edward Goldman is the art critic for Los Angeles NPR-affiliate KCRW-FM. Formerly employed by the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Goldman is a sought-after consultant and frequent public speaker. He teaches an ongoing seminar on art collecting, which he calls his “art gypsy caravan.”
Jack Grapes is an award-winning poet, playwright, actor, teacher, and the editor and publisher of ONTHEBUS, one of the top literary journals in the country.
Carol Green, the creator of Cultural Weekly’s original comic series, Life After Birth, is a coach, writer, illustrator, veteran film publicist and wry observer living in Los Angeles.
Susan Griffin is a prominent poet and writer. She is the co-editor of Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World, the recipient of a Guggenheim Award, an Emmy and an NEA fellowship, and she has published twenty books, one of which, A Chorus of Stones, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Tod Hardin is a marketing and communications professional and avid observer of the cultural scene.
Hoyt Hilsman is an award-winning screenwriter, critic and former Congressional candidate. He was a critic for Daily Variety and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. His novel, 19 Angels, a political thriller, is in development as a feature film.
Charity Hume is a writer and teacher who lives and works in Los Angeles
Bari Hochwald is Founder and Artistic Director of The Global Theatre Project which focuses on creating opportunities for healthy cultural diplomacy through theatre, as well as an actor and theatre director.
Adam Leipzig is the publisher and managing editor of this digital magazine. He is the CEO of Entertainment Media Partners, a keynote speaker and the author of Inside Track for Independent Filmmakers.
Leeza Watstein Mota is an independent filmmaker, a producer and director of theatre, and consultant on audiobook production.
Alyssa Noel, a recent Columbia journalism graduate, currently working at The Province newspaper in Vancouver, Canada, spends too much money on concert tickets and good old fashioned records.
Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D., is an award-winning scholar interested in racial and gender identities, media representation and visual art of all kinds. She is a full time faculty member at Simmons College and Visiting Scholar at Brown University.
Garner Simmons is a writer and filmmaker who lives and works in Los Angeles.
Sophia Stein writes about film and is a regular contributor to Cultural Weekly. Stein hails from USC School of Cinema-TV. She worked as a Hollywood development executive, editing assistant and post-production supervisor. Currently, she resides in the San Francisco Bay area. She appreciates most those films that make her think, as well as laugh or cry.
John Steppling, one of America’s most influential playwrights, recently returned to Los Angeles after a decade in Europe. He is artistic director of Gunfighter Nation, where he leads workshops and creates new theatre.
Guy Zimmerman is the Artistic Director of Padua Playwrights.
We also have the kind and generous permission of these sites and writers, who allow us to re-post selections from their work. We invite you to visit their sites regularly to experience more of what they do.
Argot and Ochre
Artsmeme, Debra Levin’s fine arts blog
Art Talk, Edward Goldman’s commentary on KCRW
Chloe Veltman’s blog
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
HowlRound, a journal of the theatre commons
John Bailey’s Baliwick, via the American Society of Cinematographers
Jumper, Diane Ragsdale’s blog on what the arts do and why, via artsJournal
Latinopia, Latino arts, history and culture
Literary Kicks, Levi Asher’s literary blog
Long Beach Post
Real Clear Arts, Judith H. Dobrzynski’s blog on culture, especially museums, via artsJournal
Our Weekly
The Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor’s blog on the business of arts and culture, via artsJournal
The American Scholar
The Times Quotidian, an arts and culture journal; Nancy Cantwell is the publisher and editor-in-chief
The Web of Language, Dennis Baron’s go-to site for language and technology in the news