LOUISA HILL is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who reckons with social issues through heart, humor, and horror. Her play The Lord of the Underworld’s Home for Unwed Mothers received its world premiere at Skylight Theatre and was nominated for the Ovation Award for Best Original Playwriting from the LA Stage Alliance. She received the Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and was a finalist in the Humanitas Foundation & CTG’s Playwriting Prize as well as Boston Court Theatre’s New Play Festival. Her directorial debut Los Angelez was nominated for a Jury Award at the Austin Film Festival. Television credits include Evil, Dear Edward, and Transparent. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop.

INDIA KOTIS is a playwright and anthropologist, chiefly interested in why and how the meanings of things change. Plays include Bisexual Sadness (The Road Theatre); Philia (James E. Michael Prize in Playwriting); Sybille of Harrogate (G45 Productions); The Tangibles (Playscripts, Inc.); The Secret Life of Bicycles (The Blank Theatre) and more. India has held fellowships with the Museum of the City of New York and the American Museum of Natural History where she taught courses on anthropology, archaeology, the natural world, and the known universe. She currently works at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

JOHN LOPEZ is a writer/filmmaker and an L.A. native who got his start as an assistant to feature film producers before moving on to cover entertainment and the arts for Grantland, Vanity Fair, and The Los Angeles Times, among others.  An alum of the Sundance Institute Labs, John has subsequently written and produced for such shows as Paramount Plus’s  Strange Angel, Seven Seconds for Netflix, and The Terminal List on Amazon.  He is currently writing on the second season of Amazon’s Ballard.  In the run up to the Writers Guild of America’s 2023 MBA negotiations, John was a member of the WGA’s AI Working Group and has written extensively on AI.

STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS is a playwright, journalist and novelist. His plays have been published in New York by Samuel French as well as in southeast Europe (Macedonia); presented in New York (off-Broadway), Los Angeles (Playwrights’ Arena and Pacific Resident Theatre); and developed at Center Theatre Group, Rogue Machine and The Actors’ Gang. His latest play, “White People,” was commissioned by Qendra Multimedia in Prishtina, Kosovo. His debut novel, “Fowl Play,” won the Gold Prize of the Indie Book Awards. As a journalist, Morris has written for the New York Times, LA Times, American Theatre Magazine, The Stage (London), DRAMA Magazine (London), and was theater editor for over a decade at the LA Weekly. He has served as both jurist and chair of the Drama Prize jury of the Pulitzer Prizes. Morris founded and continues to edit LA’s digital theater discussion forum, Stage Raw.

MATTHEW SCOTT MONTGOMERY is an award-winning actor and writer known for his work with The Disney Channel on Sonny With a Chance, Shake It Up!, So Random, and Austin & Ally. He was in Stage Kiss at the Geffen Playhouse. He wrote and starred in Dead Boys, co-produced at Celebration Theatre, as well as his recent world premiere of FOURSOME, co-produced by Celebration Theatre and IAMA, his home theatre company. His short film Don’t Turn Off the Ghost Light has won multiple awards in the festival circuit and reunited him with his Disney Channel co-star Allisyn Snyder (Sonny With a Chance). His first feature, Howdy, Neighbor!, was directed by Snyder and is in post-production.

RACHEL BOARDERS is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. As a screenwriter, Rachel currently writes for Netflix’s hit romantic drama Virgin River and has written for FOX’s Proven Innocent and Direct TV’s Rogue. As a playwright, she’s a current winner of the Play LA prize, and an alumna of the IAMA’s Emerging Playwrights Lab, IAMA’s New Works Festival, and The Road Theatre’s Under Construction Playwrights Group. The only thing Rachel loves more than hotdogs and math is ruining karaoke bars by singing showtunes.

ERICA WACHS is a playwright and television writer, most recently in the development room at Apple TV+ for Livingston and an upcoming Mattel feature. She is a member of IAMA’s 2025-2026 Emerging Playwrights Lab and was a New Roots Residency Finalist and Workshop Theater Intensive Finalist (2024). Her pilot Finishing School was an Austin Film Festival Second Rounder (2023); her short play Merge was produced as part of the Rainy Day Artistic Collective’s first annual Queer Voices Festival (2021); and her play Anatevka was a Eugene O’Neill Semifinalist and Austin Film Festival Second Rounder (2019). She was the recipient of the Jonathan Edwards Creative Writing Award at Yale and was honored to have her short play Waking added to the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

SHEM BITTERMAN is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director. He was named 2024 Filmmaker in Residence by The Independent Film Critics of America for Distant Tales and won 2024 Best Play from Stage Raw for The Civil Twilight. His play, The Typist, recently completed a celebrated run at The Hudson Theatre. Other plays include Iowa Boys, Ten Below, The Job, The Ramp, Night-Side, Peephole, A Death In Colombia, Influence, Open House, man.gov., Harm’s Way, The Circle, Beijing Legends, Sensitive Skin, and Justice. Films include Whitney, Betty & Coretta, The Job, Peephole, Play Dead, Full Count, Off The Lip, Open House, Peephole, Out of the Rain, and Time For Me To Come Home For Christmas. In 2015, together with then Humanitas Executive Director, Cathleen Young, he founded PLAY LA, dedicated to developing plays by LA-based writers “from the ground up” and seeing them realized on local stages.

STEFANIE BLACK, Artistic Director at IAMA Theatre Company and one of the original founding members. In the last ten years, Stefanie has paved the way for over 100 new plays in both development and production, and she has overseen more than 20 world premieres as well as five west coast premieres. Her tenure at IAMA has seen the creation of the Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission and over 8 other commissions, for both new plays and musicals, as well as the inaugural Emerging Playwrights Lab, an investment into the next generation of Los Angeles based playwrights.

JESSICA HANNA, Producing Artistic Director, Outside In Theatre. Jessica is a Los Angeles based director and producer whose focus is new work development. She has directed at Circle X, Celebration, Bootleg, and Inkwell Theatres. She’s been a guest director at Opera Orlando, Desert Rose Theatre in Santa Fe, CalState Long Beach, Occidental College, CalArts, and CalPoly Pomona. As a producer, she has worked locally, nationally (Off-Broadway), and internationally. In 2020 she directed Iris Bahr’s DAI 2.0 and produced Philicia Saunders’ BREATHE for Outside In Theatre on Outpost. She is a member of The Kilroys, Chair of the SITI Co. Board of Directors, and Co-Founder of Bootleg Theater where she was the Producing & Managing Director for 12 years.

PAULA HOLT has worked in the Los Angeles theater community for three decades, having created, managed, and produced at the storied Tiffany Theaters, one of the pre-eminent intimate theaters in Los Angeles. She chaired the boards for both LA Stage Alliance and Rogue Machine Theatre, and served on the boards of The Antaeus Company and USC’s School of Dramatic Arts. Paula served the City of Los Angeles as a Cultural Affairs Commissioner for both Mayors Hahn and Villaraigosa.

BRUCE LEMON, JR.  is a storyteller born and raised in Watts, CA. As a child, his father made him write stories and read them aloud in the hallway as punishment for lies and mischief. He’s still in trouble. Most recently, he played the titular character in the world premiere of The Aaron Play, co-produced by Coin & Ghost and Independent Shakespeare Co. More work: Acting in the BLK MGC films “Time is Money” – winning ‘best actor’ at this years Diversity in Cannes showcase during the Cannes Film Festival and the HollyShorts Grand Prix winning “Hallelujah” which premiered at Sundance in 2022. Co-Artistic Director of Watts Village. Ensemble with Cornerstone Theater Company. Princess Grace Award Winner. Sherwood Award Finalist.

ELMIRA RAHIM is an Iranian-born, Los Angeles–based actor, award-winning producer, and Associate Artistic Director of Playwrights’ Arena. She began her career in Tehran, where working within a politically restrictive environment shaped her belief in the transformative power of storytelling. In 2012, she became the first Iranian woman admitted to USC’s MFA Acting program. After graduating, she founded a theater company formerly known as ÉLAN Ensemble, known for bold, innovative productions that earned a Stage Raw Theatre Award in 2019. Her work has been staged internationally, and her practice centers on collaboration, cultural exchange, and socially conscious theater.

CAMERON WATSON, Artistic Director, Skylight Theatre Company. Cameron is a multiple award-winning, prolific theatrical director and filmmaker whose productions have been seen across the nation. He is known for his much-celebrated work with theatre companies such as Pasadena Playhouse, Antaeus, Rogue Machine, the Road, Ensemble, Fountain, and New American, among others. The Wall Street Journal declared his work among “the best in the country” and the LA Times distinguished him as “one of our finest contemporary directors.” He is a recipient of the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Achievement in Directing.

LAURA ZUCKER is a cultural strategist who works with nonprofit arts organizations on a broad array of projects. She was Director of the Center for Business and Management of the Arts at Claremont Graduate University, and served 25 years as executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, where she led the $80 million revitalization of the Ford Amphitheatre. She created and was the producing director of the Back Alley Theatre for 10 years with her husband, Allan Miller. She is president of the board of the Music Man Foundation and attended the Yale School of Drama.

SHEILA CALLAGHAN is an award-winning, prolific, provocative playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been widely produced in LA and New York as well as internationally and include: Scab; Crawl Fade To White; Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake); We Are Not These Hands; Dead City; Lascivious Something; Kate Crackernuts; That Pretty Pretty; Or, The Rape Play; Fever/Dream; Everything You Touch; Roadkill Confidential; Elevada; Bed; and Women Laughing Alone With Salad.

Screenwriting accolades include a 2026 WGA Award for the acclaimed series Dying for Sex. She was a longtime writer/producer on the hit Showtime series Shameless and received a 2017 WGA nomination for her episode, “I Am a Storm.” Her work on the Hulu comedy series Casual in 2016 garnered a Golden Globe nomination.

ALEXANDER ANDRESEN began learning classical piano as a child, then fell in love with jazz and the saxophone as a teen, and was soon playing with big bands, jazz groups, and rock bands. He also discovered he had a passion for film music and composing at this time. After completing his B.A. in Jazz Performance in Toronto, Alex worked as a composer assistant for Juno and Canadian Screen Awards winner, Trevor Yuile (Orphan Black, Being Erica), who mentored him for three years before Alex moved to Los Angeles to further pursue film scoring. He has credits in over 50 television and film titles and was nominated for Best Music at the 2023 Vancouver Film Festival for Black Mirror.

ALEX ALPHARAOH is a Guatemalan-born, Los Angeles-raised poet, playwright, and actor whose work pulses with theatrical urgency, lyrical fire, and the soul of the city. Best known for his award-winning solo show WET: A DACAmented Journey, he crafts bold, contemporary stories that merge poetry, performance, and dramatic storytelling with emotional precision. His recently published poetry collection, I’ll Leave When I’m Good And Ready: Poems of Survival And Belonging, deepens his commitment to immigrant memory, resilience, and belonging. Across stage and screen, Alpharaoh’s work is fierce, intimate, and unmistakably Los Angeles.

PAM WARD is a writer and LA native known for her poetry anthology, Between Good Men & No Man At All, and her novels, Want Some Get Some and Bad Girls Burn Slow.  She’s a UCLA graduate, California Arts Fellow, Pushcart Poetry Nominee, a participant in the Paris 2024 Poetry Olympics, and was LA’s Department of Cultural Affairs Trailblazer writer for 2025.  She is a founding member of the Leimert Park Book Festival and board member at Beyond Baroque and The World Stage.  Her many workshops include events for Black Women for Wellness and the California African American Museum.  She is currently penning her new play, Love Peace & Hair Grease, about LA’s hair industry.