Jewelle Gomez
Playwriting Faculty
Jewelle Gomez, (CaboVerdean/Wampanoag/Ioway; she/her), novelist, poet, and playwright. Her eight books include the first Black Lesbian vampire novel, THE GILDA STORIES, recently optioned by Cheryl Dunye (“Lovecraft Country”) for a TV mini-series. She’s the 2021 winner of the Legacy award from The Horror Writers Association. She is playwright in residence at New Conservatory Theatre Center where her last three plays were commissioned. “Waiting for Giovanni” about an imagined moment of indecision in the life of James Baldwin; “Leaving the Blues,” about singer/songwriter Alberta Hunter; and “Unpacking in Ptown,” about a multi-racial group of retired Vaudevillians.
torrin a. greathouse
Poetry Faculty
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk & MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. Her work is published in POETRY, New England Review, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Effing Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her debut collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020) was the winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Zeyn Joukhadar
Fiction Faculty
Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of The Thirty Names of Night, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award, and The Map of Salt and Stars, which won the Middle East Book Award and was a Goodreads Choice Awards and Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize finalist. His work has appeared in the Kink anthology, Salon, The Paris Review, [PANK], and elsewhere, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Joukhadar guest edited Mizna’s 2020 Queer + Trans Voices issue and is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and a mentor with the Periplus Collective.
Larissa Lai
Speculative Fiction
Larissa Lai has written eight books, including Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen 2002), Automaton Biographies (Arsenal Pulp 2009), The Tiger Flu (Arsenal Pulp 2018), and Iron Goddess of Mercy (Arsenal Pulp 2021). Recipient of the Jim Duggins Mid-Career Novelist’s Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the Astraea Award; and finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award and seven more, she holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary where she directs The Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing. Her new novel The Lost Century will be published by Arsenal Pulp in 2022.
Edgar Gomez
Nonfiction Faculty
Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, they are a recipient of the 2019 Marcia McQuern Award for nonfiction. Their words have appeared in Poets & Writers, Narratively, Catapult, Lithub, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Plus Magazine, and elsewhere online and in print. Their memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was called a “breath of fresh air” by The New York Times. They live in New York and Puerto Rico.
Amos Mac
Screenwriting Faculty
Amos Mac is a writer on GOSSIP GIRL for HBO Max. Previously, Amos was known for creating Original Plumbing, the first print magazine in America dedicated to trans male culture. Incited by the lack of nuanced trans masc stories on tv, he spent years in support staff roles on shows including Amazon’s TRANSPARENT and AMC’s THE SON before landing a coveted job on GOSSIP GIRL in 2019. The same year, Amos co-wrote the award-winning feature NO ORDINARY MAN, exploring the extraordinary life of jazz musician Billy Tipton. Amos lives in LA with his family where he writes, develops and pitches original shows that explore identity and second coming of age narratives through a queer lens.
Mark Oshiro
Young Adult Fiction Faculty
Mark Oshiro is the award-winning author of the young adult books ANGER IS A GIFT (2019 Schneider Family Book Award) and EACH OF US A DESERT, both with Tor Teen, as well as their middle grade debut, THE INSIDERS, with Harper Collins. They are also the co-author (with Rick Riordan) of the upcoming PERCY JACKSON novel centered on Nico di Angelo and Will Solace. When not writing, they are trying to pet every dog in the world.
