This wide-ranging conversation will explore the life and career of writers who blend their creative work with literary criticism, personal narrative, and academic scholarship. The authors will share their experience connecting creativity with analysis, while balancing academic and professional demands.

• Emily Hodgson Anderson is professor of English and Dean of Undergraduate Education at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Most recently, she is the author of Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life (Columbia UP, March 2025). She is also the author of two books of literary criticism and numerous literary articles, and her work for the popular press has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Air/Light, and LitHub. She lives in Los Angeles with her two young boys, one puppy, and one old dog.
• Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review, and Huizache, among others. Recent work includes Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California, a fictional account of the life of historian and newspaper columnist Delilah Beasley. Collaborations include WE, with Los Angeles artist Susan Silton, whose etchings accompany Dana’s short story, “We See It Differently, You and I.” Born and raised in and around Los Angeles, she is a professor of English USC.
• Elda María Román is an associate professor in the English department at USC. She studies race, class, literature, and media. She has authored a book, Race and Upward Mobility, along with articles on Latine and Black media. She received her BA from Brown University and her PhD from Stanford University. Her creative writing has been published in the Gulf Coast Journal, The Rumpus, Huizache, and Air/Light. Winner of the 2024 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize and nominated for Best American Essays 2024 as well as a Pushcart Prize, she is working on a book of creative nonfiction.
• Sara Sligar is an author and academic based in Los Angeles, where she teaches English and creative writing as a postdoctoral fellow at USC. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s in History from the University of Cambridge. Her writing has been published in McSweeney’s, Quartz, The Hairpin, and other outlets. Her novels include Vantage Point and Take Me Apart.
• David Ulin (moderator) is the author of the novel Thirteen Question Method and Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The former book editor and book critic of the Times, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles. He is a professor of English at USC, where he edits the journal Air/Light.