• Our People

    Susan Zakin, Editor

    Susan Zakin is the author of several books, including Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (Viking). Her writing has appeared in GQ, Vogue, Salon, and The New York Times.

    Brian Cullman, West Village Editor, Muse

    Brian Cullman is a musician, producer, and writer. As a producer, he has worked with Lucinda Williams and Taj Mahal, Ollabelle, and Persian-Indian group Ghazal, and collaborated with Youssou N'dour on a record for Senegalese guitar wizard Jimi Mbaye. He has written for Creem, Crawdaddy, Musician, Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, Spin, and Details, winning the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award three times. His most recent CD is Winter Clothes.

    Blanche McCrary Boyd, Contributing Editor

    Blanche McCrary Boyd is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared in Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and many other publications. Her most recent novel, Tomb of the Unknown Racist, was a Finalist for the PEN-Faulkner Award in 2019.

    William Thatcher Dowell, International Editor

    Bill Dowell was a foreign correspondent for Time magazine and NBC News, and an associate producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. As Time's Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, based in Hong Kong, and as a Paris bureau correspondent, he reported on Africa, the Middle East and India.

    Lisa Mednick Powell, Associate Editor and Copy Chief

    Lisa Mednick Powell is a songwriter and musician who has made three critically acclaimed albums and has performed worldwide as an accompanist. She has also taught English at several community colleges and universities. She has published one book, Finding the Azimuth, with Cholla Needles Press.

    Maxine Chernoff, Consulting Editor, Poetry

    Maxine Chernoff is the author of 17 poetry collections, most recently Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems. Former chair of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, she has been an NEA Fellow, a winner of the PEN Translation Award, and a visiting writer at the American Academy in Rome.

    Steve Erickson, Contributing Writer

    Steve Erickson is the author of ten novels and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He has written for Esquire, The New York Times, McSweeney's, and the BBC. He covers media and the arts for Los Angeles magazine.

    Mikal Gilmore, Contributing Writer

    Mikal Gilmore is the author of four books, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir Shot in the Heart, and the 1960s cultural history Stories Done. He is a longtime writer for Rolling Stone.

    Deanne Stillman, Contributing Writer

    Deanne Stillman is the author of four books, including Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave. She has written for Rolling Stone, TinHouse, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, and many other publications. She teaches journalism and nonfiction at the University of California-Palm Desert.

    Brin-Jonathan Butler, Writer

    Brin-Jonathan Butler has written for Esquire, Bloomberg, ESPN Magazine, Playboy, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Southwest: The Magazine, Al Jazeera, and Vice. His first book, The Domino Diaries, was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing and was a Boston Globe Best Book of 2015.

    Matt Cooper, Writer

    Matt Cooper was senior editor at Newsweek, managing editor for White House coverage at National Journal, and is a former reporter for Time, where he made national news when he was held in contempt of court, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, for refusing to name his sources on the story of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose assets were put at risk when Bush administration officials leaked her identity.

    Paul Cullum, Writer

    Paul Cullum is the author of several books. He has written for the LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Film Threat, Arthur, Black Clock, and hundreds of other marginally subversive magazines. He was the frontman for the band Wild Blue Yonder. And, yes, he's from Texas.

    J.C. Hallman, Writer

    J.C. Hallman is the author of six books, including The Devil is a Gentleman and The Hospital for Bad Poets. He has written for Harper's, Tin House, GQ, The New Republic, and The Baffler. He has taught creative writing at a number of universities. He is teaching nonfiction for JOTPY.

    Tom McNichol, Writer

    Tom McNichol has written for Washington, D.C.'s City Paper, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Wired. He is the author of several books, most recently AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War. He worked for NPR and he can use that voice anytime he wants to.

    Lawrence Osborne, Writer

    Born in England, Lawrence Osborne is the author of critically acclaimed novels including The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, Hunters in the Dark, Beautiful Animals, and Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe novel commissioned by the Raymond Chandler estate. The Forgiven was made into a movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain.

    Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, Writer

    Luisita Lopez Torregrosa has been an editor at The New York Times. Her books include Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution and The Noise of Infinite Longing. She was written for Vanity Fair, Vogue, NBC News, and many others.

    Terry Tempest Williams, Writer, Supporter

    Terry Tempest Williams is the author, most recently, of Erosion: Essays of Undoing. She is a writer, activist, and icon of the American Southwest. She teaches at Harvard Divinity School.

    Cole Coonce, Videographer

    Cole Coonce has written about drag racing, drag queens, drum machines, sex machines, ketamine, Kraftwerk, the Land Speed Record, the record business, the Civil War, Erwin Rommel, bicycles, Japanese drifters, high plains drifters, UFOs, quantum mechanics, shade-tree mechanics, and famous nobodies who slept on his couch. He is currently producing and directing documentaries on motorsports but often adheres to the speed limit.

    Jamil Said Bakar, Intern

    Jamil Said Bakar is a computer science major at Chapman University.

  • Advisors

    David Weir

    David Weir is a journalist who has worked and published at Rolling Stone, Salon, Wired.com, The New York Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, New York, New Times, SunDance, and many other publications and sites. He is a co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting and the author of four books.  

    Roger Black

    Roger Black designed Rolling Stone and New York magazines in their heyday. He led redesigns at Scientific American, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post.