Edgar Allan Poe Award–nominated author Paul Levine crafts thrillers where law, history, and moral courage collide. Whether it’s linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter roaming Miami courtrooms or Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin battling fascists in Hollywood, Levine delivers suspense with heart and bite. Winner of the John D. MacDonald Fiction Award and nominee for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus, and James Thurber prizes, his novels appear in 23 languages. A former trial lawyer, Levine wrote twenty episodes of the CBS drama JAG and co-created First Monday starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. His international bestseller To Speak for the Dead launched the Jake Lassiter series, and Early Grave was named the third-best legal thriller of the 21st Century by BestThrillers.com—just behind Michael Connelly and John Grisham. He also pens the critically acclaimed Solomon vs. Lord legal capers. His newest novel, Midnight Burning, opens the Einstein-Chaplin historical thrillers. A member of Penn State’s Society of Distinguished Alumni and a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law, Levine lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Lorissa Rinehart is an author, cultural producer, and public speaker. Her writing explores women’s history, politics, war, and their points of intersection. Her debut book, First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent (St. Martin’s Press) has received rave reviews. She’s a TEDx speaker who’s appeared at the National Press Club, Friends of the National World War II Memorial, the Women’s National Press Club, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation among other prestigious organizations. She’s been featured on numerous podcasts.

Moderator, Perie Longo, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2007-2009, has published 4 books of poetry, the latest Baggage Claim (2014) and poems in numerous literary journals. This June will be her 40th year teaching poetry at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She’s thrilled and awed to be still poeting and standing.

Melinda Palacio, current Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, is an award-winning writer. From South Central LA, she holds 2 degrees in Comparative Literature. A 2007 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2009 poetry alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, she published Bird Forgiveness in 2018.

David Starkey, Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate, Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at SBCC, and the Publisher/Co-editor of Gunpowder Press, published 11 full length collections of poetry and more than 500 poems in literary journals. His novel Poor Ghost was released in March 2024.

Chryss Yost is a Santa Barbara Poet Laureate who served from 2013-2015. She was awarded the 2013 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize and other honors, including Pushcart Prize nominations. She’s co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Her collection Mouth & Fruit was published 2014, and her poems have been included in the most popular poetry textbooks in the country and widely anthologized elsewhere.

Enid Osborn Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara 2017-2019, published When the Big Wind Comes, set in New Mexico. A Pushcart nominee, her work appears in regional California and Southwest journals. She has a series of themed chapbooks, and she co-edited A Bird Black as the Sun / California Poets on Crows & Ravens in 2011.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate 2019-2021, is author of 6 collections of poems and is the recipient of a Pushcart. She taught at Emerson, Sarah Lawrence, UCSB, and is part of the faculty at the Solstice Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Lately: New and Selected Poems was published January 2024.

Emma Trelles Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2021-2023, received an Established Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She was named a Poet Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets. Daughter of Cuban immigrants, she’s author of Tropicalia, winner of the Andrés Montoya Prize.

Paul Willis, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2011-2013 is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he’s been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac and nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. His YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green, was released in 2020.