Eugene Garcia-Cross is the author of the novel Miss Me Forever and the story collection Fires of Our Choosing, which was named the Gold Medal winner in the Short Story category by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He’s taught creative writing at Northwestern, Penn State, the University of Chicago, and other institutions. His stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, and Callaloo, among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 and 2015 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and fellowships from NBC, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the Yaddo Artists’ Colony, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. As a TV writer, Eugene has worked on shows for Disney Channel, NBC, ABC, Peacock, and Disney+. Currently, he serves as a Co-Producer on Season 2 of the NBC sitcom Happy’s Place starring Reba McEntire. Eugene lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

Aaron Rahsaan Thomas is an acclaimed screenwriter and producer for television and film. He is the co-creator and executive producer for CBS’s series reboot of S.W.A.T., which just celebrated its 8th and final season.Aaron grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, developing a love for storytelling after completing a fifth-grade assignment to create his own original Greek myth from scratch. As time passed, he developed his passion for storytelling visually and attended Morehouse College. Aaron would also matriculate through the University of Kansas, earning honors in English Literature, before moving to Los Angeles and attending the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts for graduate school. He would later direct one of ESPN’s most popular 30 for 30 films called Trojan War, about the USC Football team. After graduating from USC, Aaron was selected for the prestigious CBS Writers Mentoring Program.Aaron began his professional career as a writer’s assistant on Soul Food: The Series and went on to write for such TV series as NBC’s Friday Night Lights, for which he received a Peabody Award, as well as CBS procedurals, such as Numb3rs and CSI:NY. Two of his screenplays were produced into feature films (Cover directed by Bill Duke, and Assassination Games starring Jean Claude Van Damme).

Aaron has also served as a Co-Executive Producer on TNT’s SouthLAnd, Fox’s Sleepy Hollow and Netflix’s The Get Down.

Born in Princeton, N.J., Shimizu spent much of her youth traveling the globe with a world music choir. A life-long fan of movies and comic books, she attended film school at Emerson College in Boston, then moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to pursue a career in the industry. Following graduation, she worked in post-production, using nights and weekends to follow her true passion: writing. Her hard work paid off as she was accepted into NBC’s “Writers on the Verge” program in 2009, and shortly thereafter was staffed on “The Cape.”  She then moved on to “Being Human,” where she spent two seasons. She was then brought on to The CW’s “Arrow.” After three years writing for the DC comic adaptation, she transferred to the spinoff “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” eventually rising to co-showrunner. Most recently, she was an executive producer and writer on “The Hunting Party” for NBC, and currently has both film and TV projects in development across multiple studios.