LIENNA SILVER was born in Russia, and immigrated to the United States before Perestroyka came to the rescue. In Los Angeles, she began translating plays and screenplays, and cowrote a project for British Screen International. Her short stories have received numerous honorary awards, and she is working on a novel about contemporary Russia.
SUSAN STRAIGHT was born in Riverside, where she still lives with her family. She has published six novels. Her latest, A Million Nightingales (Pantheon, 2006), set during slavery, is the first of a trilogy about the characters who appear in “The Golden Gopher.”
HECTOR TOBAR is the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the author of Translation Nation and The Tattooed Soldier. Born in L.A., he has been editor of the bilingual San Francisco newspaper El Tecolote and features editor at the LA Weekly, and he has written for the New Yorker, the Nation, and other publications. He now reports for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City, and is married with three children.
DIANA WAGMAN is the author of three novels and the film Delivering Milo. She is the recipient of the 2001 PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction. She teaches in the film department at California State University, Long Beach.
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