Sam Boyer was once an Academy Nicholl Fellow, a CAPE New Writers Fellow, and a short-haired screenwriter at both USC’s film school and the Michener Center. He now works as a writer with Perfect Storm Entertainment (Fast & Furious), Zero Gravity (Ozark), Janet Yang Productions (Joy Luck Club), and The Asian American Foundation, among others. He lives in Pasadena, which isn’t really in Los Angeles, but is pretty close. He will teach the Michener Center’s First Year Seminar course for the Fall 2023 semester.

Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Maybe Bird, and served as the Associate Editor of When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. She is the recipient of a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford. Jennifer received her PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver, her MFA from the Vermont College of the Fine Arts, and is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Jennifer teaches for the Rainier Writing Workshop and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and is the Literary Assistant to the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo. Foerster grew up living internationally, is of European (German/Dutch) and Mvskoke descent, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She lives in San Francisco. She will teach the Michener Center’s Poetry Studies course for the Spring 2024 semester.