LLF Board of Trustees

Dr. Judith A. Markowitz, Co-Chair
Dr. Judith A. Markowitz has published articles, taught university-level courses, and presented papers on dictionaries, semantics, gender and language, and culture and language. Her abiding interest in gender and language was the impetus for The Gay Detective Novel. She has reviewed lesbian and gay mysteries (LGM) for The Lambda Book Report, presented a series of LGM seminars for Chicago’s Gerber-Hart Library, and chaired a panel on LGM at Bouchercon. Judith is recognized internationally as a leader in the computer-speech and biometric industries where she has served as an analyst and consultant for more than twenty years. In 2003, she was named one of the top ten leaders in speech technology. She’s frequently invited to speak and write on speech technologies and recently delivered the keynote speech at the National Centre for Biometric Studies Conference on Voice Authentication in Canberra, Australia.

David McConnell, Co-Chair
David McConnell is the author of the acclaimed novel, The Silver Hearted, 2010. Edmund White called it “a perfect work of art.” Patrick McGrath hailed him as “the most intriguing, original and exotic writer I’ve come across in years.” His short fiction and journalism have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including The Literary Review (UK), Granta and Prospect Magazine (UK). His novel The Firebrat came out in 2003. His newest book (Akashic, March, 2013) will be ground-breaking non-fiction, a reappraisal and narratives of hate crimes to be called American Honor Killings, ecstasies of violence and the crazed sexual dignity of young men. He’s also co-chair of the Lambda Literary Foundation. He lives in New York City. www.davidmcconell.com

Teresa DeCrescenzo, Treasurer
Teresa DeCrescenzo is a graduate of USC School of Social Work, which honored her with its Most Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1991. She is also the Founder of GLASS (Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services), the first residential program for LGBT youth in foster care in the country. Terry was named the NASW Social Worker of the Year award in 1990. Her work was further recognized by NASW in 1995, with the Koshland Award for Outstanding Administrator. In 2005, she was given the “Pioneer Award” by the Child Welfare League of America, and in 2007, was recognized with the Knee-Whitman Award for her national impact on mental health policy. Among her many publications is the book, “Helping Gay and Lesbian Youth: New Policies, New Programs”. In addition to her private psychotherapy and life coaching practice, Terry is a faculty member at California State University, Northridge, where she teaches Social Policy and Social Work Practice.

Scott Cranin, Secretary
Scott Cranin is a former Lehman Brothers investment banker. He traded, sold and underwrote municipal bonds until burning out at a mere 30 years old. After an early retirement, Scott moved to Philadelphia and became editor of LGBT cinema at TLAvideo.com. With a mushrooming e-commerce business, he quickly added LGBTQ books to the site. Scott is now a Managing Director of TLA Entertainment Group where he oversees Purchasing in addition to his web content duties. Scott is also a programmer for Philadelphia QFest, an LGBT film festival held every July.

Sue A. Greer
A former market research consultant, Sue A. Greer received her PhD in journalism & mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With a focus on political & issues polling and strategic audience analysis, she built an international clientele that included newspapers, magazines, government institutions and non-profits. From 1999-2004, she was director of research of TRAC Media Services, which provided programming and fundraising support for public television. Under the pseudonym KG MacGregor, she published Golden Crown Award finalist Just This Once with Bella Books in 2005. Her sixth Bella novel, Out of Love, won the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Women’s Romance. She collected Golden Crown Awards for Out of Love, Without Warning, Worth Every Step, Photographs of Claudia (romance), and Secrets So Deep (romantic suspense).

J. Michael Samuel
J. Michael Samuel is a Director and VP of Professional Practice in Audit and Security at Wells Fargo Bank. He retired from the Federal Reserve 12th District as a Coordinating Audit Director. He is a frequent guest speaker on audit practice and has appeared throughout Silicon Valley and San Francisco at numerous audit and control conferences for the International Institute of Auditors, Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve Bank System. For more than 15+ years he has served as a facilitator and group leader for the University of California AIDS Health Project, a Shanti volunteer for more than four years, and served on the founding board of Directors of Golden Gate Performing Arts. He also has served on the Food For Thought AIDS Food Bank Sonoma County Auction committee.

S. Chris Shirley

Carla Trujillo
Carla Trujillo was born in New Mexico and grew up in Northern California. She received her B.S. degree in Human Development from UC Davis, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the editor of Living Chicana Theory (Third Woman Press 2003), an anthology about Chicana feminist theory. Trujillo is also the editor of Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, winner of a Lambda Literary Award and the Out/Write Vanguard Award. Her novel, What Night Brings (Curbstone Press 2003), won the Miguel Marmol prize focusing on human rights. What Night Brings also won the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Latino Literary Foundation Latino Book Award, the Bronze Medal from Foreword Magazine, Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Meyers Books Award, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Carla works as the Director of the Graduate Diversity Program at U.C. Berkeley, and has focused some of her recent activities on improving the work and classroom climate using Interactive Theater.

Ellery Washington
Ellery Washington teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Pratt University, in Brooklyn, NY, where he also teaches a narrative structures course in the MFA Digital Arts Program. He works as a freelance editor for various literary publications and a script consultant for film and television production companies. His fiction and essays have appeared in wide range of publications, both stateside and abroad, most notably in The New York Times, Ploughshares, OUT Magazine, The International Review, The BerkeleyFiction Review, The Frankfurter Allgemeine, Nouvelles Frontières, and the National Bestseller State by State–a Panoramic Portrait of America. His film credits include feature rewrites for independent producers and consulting work for major film companies, such as Paramount Pictures, Tristar, and Fox Searchlight. His primary focus, however, remains narrative prose, be it fiction or creative nonfiction. He is the recipient of a PEN Center West Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship and an IBWA Prize for short fiction. He has taught classes and lead workshops with broad range of writers, from beginners to graduate students and previously published authors, in a list of cities that includes Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris and Berlin. He currently divides his time between Oakland and New York.

Don Weise
Don Weise, publisher of Magnus Books, has been firmly established in independent publishing in virtually every area, from sales, marketing, design and publicity to editing and production since 1993. As the associate publisher of Cleis Press he published, Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking, Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual African American Fiction—the most comprehensive book of African American LGBTQ literature published to date—and Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin. In 2003 Weise served as senior editor at Carroll & Graf Publishers with an author list including John Rechy, James Purdy, Samuel R. Delany, Edward Albee, Leslie Feinberg, E. Lynn Harris, Andrew Holleran, Kate Clinton, Bob Smith, Cheryl Clarke, Marijane Meaker, Charles Busch, Michelangelo Signorile, Keith Boykin, and Michael Musto, among others.

Jan Zivic
Jan Zivic, a Lambda Literary Fellow, will be graduated in 2012 in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco, where she is working on her status as an “emerging” writer. In 2011 she published a memoir piece in the Porter Gulch Review, and more recently, a short story in Temporary Shelter, Eleven Stories, edited by Karl Soehnlein, an award-winning Lambda Literary author.

In 2007, Jan co-founded vibrantBrains, a cognitive gym and start-up listed on Entrepreneur Magazine’s “100 Brilliant Companies” with her wife, Lisa Schoonerman. In previous careers Jan taught English and Film and sponsored the literary magazine at high schools in Pennsylvania and Ohio. After moving to California, she spent more than twenty years in Executive Search with several international consulting firms, as well as founding and managing her own firm with offices in SF and LA, The Zivic Group.

She has received the Cable Car Woman of the Year Award, the Maya Angelou Award for Community Leadership from the Center for Excellence at the University of California Medical School, and a Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of California, PA, all for her community philanthropic and volunteer leadership. Jan, her wife Lisa, and her daughter, Jessica, all live in the Bay Area.