Evan Karp, Executive Director
Evan Karp is the creator and executive director of Quiet Lightning, which the Los Angeles Review of Books has called “collective alchemy,” and the founding editor of Litseen, recognized by the New York Times as a go-to, near-comprehensive source for Bay Area literary events. He’s covered literary culture in columns for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, SF/Arts, and SF Weekly, and his writing has appeared in Guardian UK, BOMBlog, Eleven Eleven, and many other places. Also an events producer, Evan has managed front of house at SOMArts Cultural Center and at The Emerald Tablet, where he developed both of their interdisciplinary performance series, Under the Influence and Call and Response, and is currently events manager at Booksmith, The Bindery, and Berkeley Arts & Letters. He combines music and writing with his brother Miles as Turk & Divis.
evan at quietlightning dot org
Chris Cole, Managing Director
Chris Cole is a father, a writer, and the NBA 6th man of the year three years running. Wait, scratch that last thing. He does run the West Coast office for a killer User Experience Agency called EffectiveUI and he coaches West Marin Little League games like nobody’s business. And, he is nice to animals. He’s also co-founder of Pints and Prose, the Fairfax-based reading series founded by the Tuesday Night Writers. That makes seventy-five words. chris at quietlightning dot org
Meghan Thornton, Treasurer
Meghan Thornton is a writer and visual effects artist originally from Chicago. She first became involved in Quiet Lightning as a reader, performing at the inaugural show in December 2009, and now serves as a board member and Treasurer. She writes both poetry and fiction, and has a series of novels in the works. meghan at quietlightning dot org
Kelsey Schimmelman, Secretary
Kelsey Schimmelman holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, where she specialized in creative writing and literary theory. Kelsey is a compulsive diarist, community enthusiast and conference organizer. Former contributing editor to Spectrum Literary Magazine, she currently curates and manages GitHub’s San Francisco event space and produces events designed to galvanize the local open source and art communities.
Christine No, Producer / Assistant Managing Director
Christine was born and bred in Los Angeles, CA. but has called New Mexico, New York City and now Oakland her home. She holds her BA in creative writing from the College of Santa Fe and her MFA in Film from the American Film Institute. By day she is a producer of films, commercials and media content. By night, she is usually hungry and sleepy. Christine’s film projects have shown at the Sundance Film Festival, in VOD/theaters, in exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California and recently in exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum. Her writing has appeared in Writing Without Walls, Tayo Literary Magazine, Catch & Release, sPARKLE+bLINK, STORY, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Christine is an Aries, likes the colors blue and grey and Moroccan food. She has long conversations with her dog Brandeh, because Brandeh is people. When you meet Christine, ask her to talk in her dog’s voice. (She’ll do it.)
Lisa Church, Producer / Curator Liaison
Lisa Church has spent years as a non-writer fan of the rich offerings available in the Bay Area literary and arts communities She finds volunteering is a good way to participate in and promote those communities, and served on Litquake’s Executive Committee prior to joining the Quiet Lightning Board, serving as co-producer of the 2014 San Francisco Lit Crawl. Lisa is a Board Member on the San Francisco Chapter of Northern California ACLU and a Texting Team Lead for the National People Power (ACLU’s grassroots volunteer army) Team. She raised her daughter in San Francisco, where she lives and works as a Director of Operations in Financial Services. lisa at quietlightning dot org
Edmund Zagorin, Disruptor
Elizeya Quate (Edmund Zagorin) is a writer dwelling mysteriously both inside and outside this exact sentence. Quate’s work has appeared in Joyland, Entropy, Big Lucks, Sleepingfish, sparkle + blink, the 2016 novel The Face of Our Town (Kernpunkt Press) and the 2018 chapbook cra-que-lure (Finishing Line Press). A resident of Schema, Quate hosts the monthly performance art event Make It Look Like An Accident.
Hadas Goshen, Disruptor
Hadas Goshen is the founder and host of the YouTube Monthly Open Mic and has performed with multiple national poetry slam teams, representing Berkeley, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and UC Berkeley at National Poetry Slam competitions and placing third in the nation at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. She has toured and featured internationally as a slam poet, though she currently enjoys reading at non-slam Bay Area events such as The Racket at Adobe Books, Red Lit Light, and of course the electric evenings with Quiet Lightning!! A former journalist, Hadas has been published in The New York Times, CNN, and the Oprah Magazine. In September, she put out her first chapbook, Catch & Release.
Sophia Passin can be found swimming in the bay on a sunny day. Sophia recently received her Bachelor’s in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco where she helped curate the 2018 and 2019 editions of The Ignatian Literary Magazine. A few pieces of hers can be found nestled in Paris Atlantic. She aims to one day make a multi-media lit mag of her own.
Brandon Loberg, Design
When he was younger, Brandon Loberg‘s fascination with hopeless adventurism was awakened by a series of bizarre and embarrassing events, culminating with a stint in the Argentine military as a gun-for-hire during the Falklands War. Despite his choice of sides, however, his poor understanding of Spanish earned him commendation from the late Margaret Thatcher, after he misunderstood his commanders’ orders and caused the sole incident of friendly-fire during the conflict. Taking a vow of pacifism (and 500,000 pesos), he now indulges his curmudgeonly predilections from his hideout deep in the railway tunnels of San Francisco. He prides himself on his sincerity. brandon at quietlightning dot org
Emeritus Board
