Eva Hoffman grew up in Cracow, Poland, where she studied music intensively before emigrating in her teens to Canada and then the United States. After receiving her B.A. from Rice University and her Ph. D. in English and American literature from Harvard University, she worked as senior editor at The New York Times, serving for a while as the newspaper's regular literary critic. She is the author of five works of non-fiction: Lost in Translation, Exit Into History, Shtetl, After Such Knowledge, and Time,; as well as two novels -- The Secret and the forthcoming Appassionata (published in the UK as Illuminations). She has studied psychoanalysis, and has written and lectured internationally on issues of exile, memory, Polish-Jewish relations, politics and culture.  She has taught literature and creative writing at various universities, including the University of East Anglia, MIT and Columbia. She has written and presented radio programs, and has received the prestigious Prix Italia for Radio.  Her literary awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She holds an honorary doctorate from Warwick University, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She currently lives in London, and works as visiting professor at Hunter College, CUNY. 

Louise Steinman is curator of ALOUD at Central Library and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC. She is the author of two books: The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War and The Knowing Body: The Artist as Storyteller in Contemporary Performance.

www.louisesteinman.com

The Aratani/Japan America Theatre

244 South San Pedro Street

Los Angeles, CA CA 90012

Box Office: 213.680.3700

www.jaccc.org

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He lives in Istanbul.

www.orhanpamuk.net

Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy and Middle East Analyst for CBS News. Aslan is cofounder and creative director of BoomGen Studios, a hub for creative content from and about the Middle East, as well as the Editorial Executive of Mecca.com, an on-line community for Muslim youth. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles where he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside.

www.rezaaslan.com

Rita Dove, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and musician, lives in Charlottesville, where she is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Gail Eichenthal is the Director of Arts Programming at Classical KUSC 91.5 FM, and the producer and host of the Saturday talk show, Arts Alive. She is also the longtime host and producer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic radio broadcasts, as well as the producer of nationally syndicated radio broadcasts by the LA Chamber Orchestra and LA Opera. Gail was previously an award-winning news reporter and anchor at KNX and CBS Radio. Gail's articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the LA Times Magazine, and Symphony Magazine.

www.kusc.org

Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, nonfiction and journalism. Penguin published Ghost Girl, her most recent book of poems, in 2004, and will publish her book Dearest Creature in October, 2009. Her previous twelve books include Medicine, Crown of Weeds, which won a California Book Award, Nerve Storm, and Bitter Angel, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, several volumes of Best American Poetry and the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera is a lover of experiment, hybrid genres and good flour tortillas. His poetry was sparked by his parent’s farm-worker corridos and flourished in the civil rights movement of the 60’s. In additional to his twenty-four published works Juan Felipe’s recent books are Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry 2009, and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments, which won the 2008 Pen National Poetry Award and the 2008 Pen/Oakland Josephine Miles National Poetry Award. He is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside.

http://www.juanfelipe.org

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1993. He is the author of Dancing In Odessa (2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award,and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. In 2008, he was awarded Lannan Foundation's Literary Fellowship. His anthology of 20th century poetry in translation, "Ecco Book of International Poetry," will be published in 2010. Currently, he teaches Contemporary World Poetry, Creative Writing, and Literary Translation in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University

http://www.ilyakaminsky.com

Robert N. Casper is the Programs Director at the Poetry Society of America. He is also Publisher of the literary magazine jubilat and Co-Founder of the jubilat/Jones Reading Series in Amherst, MA. He lives in Brooklyn.

www.poetrysociety.org

Peter Gallagher has starred in over 50 films, including sex, lies and videotape, American Beauty (SAG Award), The Player (Golden Globe), Short Cuts, To Gillian on her 37th Birthday, and currently in ADAM.  On Broadway: The Country Girl, Noises Off, Guys and Dolls, Long Days Journey Into Night (Tony Award Nomination), The Real Thing, A Doll’s Life, Grease and Hair (revival). Television: Californication, The OC. Recordings include: 7 Days In Memphis, Pal Joey and Guys and Dolls.

Tom Sellar is editor of Theater magazine and associate professor of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at Yale University. His criticism and reporting have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, American Theatre and other national publications, and he is a frequent contributor to the Village Voice. Sellar received his doctorate from Yale in 2003 and is currently writing a book about theater in Eastern Europe since 1989.

For Theater, Yale’s journal of criticism, reportage, and plays, Sellar has researched, written for, and edited special editions about new Polish theater (including Grzegorz Jarzyna and TR Warszawa) and devoted to the playwright/novelist Witold Gombrowicz. He is currently preparing a volume on the ideas of influential Polish director Krystian Lupa, Since Sellar became editor in 2003, Theater has also published issues on contemporary performance in Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia, with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

http://www.theathermagazine.org

Richard Schechner is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, general editor of the Worlds of Performance and co-editor with Carol Martin of Enactments (Seagull). His books include Environmental Theater, Between Theater and Anthropology, The End of Humanism, Performance Theory, The Future of Ritual, and Performance Studies—An Introduction. He founded The Performance Group and East Coast Artists, with whom he directed many productions that have been seen around theworld. He has directed plays in India, South Africa, and China. Among his numerous fellowships and awards is a Lifetime Achievement Award from Performance Studies International, a Career Achievement Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Schechner is an honorary professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, Havana, and at the Shanghai Theatre Academy where in 2005 the "Schechner Center for Performance Studies" was inaugurated. He is the Curator of the 2009 Year of Grotowski in New York.

David Sefton was appointed Director of UCLA Performing Arts in October 2000. Previously he was Head of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Festival Hall in London where he created and produced the annual Meltdown Festival, For UCLA Live he directs an ambitious annual series of music, dance and performance which has become renowned locally, nationally and internationally for its diversity and innovation.

www.uclalive.org

Joanna Klass is the founding director of Arden2, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, facilitating exchanges between Polish and American artists.  She has brought a broad spectrum of contemporary Polish theatre to the U.S., including Gardzeniece Theatre Lab, Song of the Goat, Teatr Provisorium, the Modjeska Theatre Company, Kana Theatre, the Wroclaw Puppet Theatre, TR Warszawa, andTeatr ZAR.  In 2008, she was invited by the Grotowski Institute to lead the 2009 UNESCO sponsored Grotowski Year.  A native of Legnica, Poland, she was educated in Wroclaw (MA in American Literature), and moved to Southern California in 1984.  Before founding Arden2, she was a facilitator and interpreter for the Polish immigrant community.       

Grzegorz Jarzyna, is one of Poland’s most renowned stage directors. His debut revolutionized Polish theatre. He holds degrees in philosophy from Jagiellonian University and stage directing from the State Drama School in Krakow. Since 1998 he has been Artistic Director of TR Warszawa (former Teatr Rozmaitości), one Poland's most innovative theatres.

Jarzyna has staged and radically reinterpreted classic drama (Tropical Craze according to Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Magnetism of the Heart based on Aleksander Fredro's Maiden Vows), adapted major European novels (Mann's Doctor Faustus, Prince Myshkin according to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot), directed famous contemporary plays (Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis in Warsaw and Düsseldorf), and well-loved operas (Mozart's Così fan tutte at Teatr Wielki in Poznań, Prokofiev’s Gambler at Opera de Lyon). His readiness and enthusiasm for cutting across genres have resulted in 2007: Macbeth according to Shakespeare (2005), an almost cinematicand Giovanni based on Mozart's Don Giovanni and Moliere's Don Juan, a production melding dramatictheatre and opera.

He has won numerous international prizes and distinctions. His latest productions are T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. based on the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini (premiered in February 2009), to be presented as part of UCLA Live this fall.

Mary Karr is the author of four volumes of poetry, including Sinners Welcome, Viper Rum, The Devil's Tour, and Abacus. Karr's first memoir, The Liars' Club, won the PEN Martha Albrand Award for best first nonfiction. The sequel, Cherry, about her adolescence was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in Syracuse and New York City.

Heather King is the author of two memoirs: Parched, and Redeemed: Stumblings Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding. A commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” she is also an ex-lawyer, an ex-drunk, and a Catholic convert.