LITLIT Panel, Retellings: Reimagining the Stories We Know

Retellings: The Reimagination of Stories We Know is a panel conversation on pushing the possibilities of the traditional storytelling forms. From the lessons of Jewish folktales to Taiwanese myths, and from Filipino creatures to memories of an alien abduction, our panelists weave classic proverbs, tales, and fears into contemporary literature. Join Melissa Chadburn, K-Ming Chang, Ilana Masad, and sam sax as they discuss the use of myths and legends woven into their novels. This panel will be moderated by Mads Gobbo.

Join us June 6 + 7 at LITLIT for this and other panels! Held at SCI-Arc, LITLIT: The Little Literary Fair, is a free festival celebrating the West Coast Literary Arts, presented by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Learn more about the presses, publishers, and the whole weekend here!

Retellings: The Reimagination of Stories We Know will take place on Saturday, June 6, at 3 p.m. at the SCI-Arc Library.

This panel is made possible with the support of the Department of Cultural Affairs and The Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

_____________________________________

Melissa Chadburn’s debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, was published with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April 2022 and was long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award. She’s done extensive reporting on the child welfare system and appears in the Netflix docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. She was awarded her PhD from USC’s creative writing program. Melissa is a worker lover and, through her own work and literary citizenship, strives to upend economic violence. Her mother taught her how to sharpen a pencil with a knife and she’s basically been doing that ever since.

K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, a Kundiman fellow, and an O. Henry Award winner. She is the author of the novel Bestiary, which was short-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and her 2022 story collection Gods of Want won a Lambda Literary Award. In 2026, she will be making her YA debut with Straight to the Source, a rom-com forthcoming from Holiday House, and her second YA project, a novel-in-verse titled Girl Gods, will be forthcoming from Kokila in 2027. Her next novel for adults, Needlemouth, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on October 20, 2026. 

Ilana Masad is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism whose work has been published widely. Masad is the author of the novels All My Mother's Lovers and Beings and co-editor of the anthology Here for All the Reasons: Why We Watch The Bachelor.

sam sax is a queer, Jewish writer and educator. They’re the author of Yr Dead (long-listed for the National Book Award) and Pig, named one of the best books of 2023 by New York magazine and Electric Literature. They’re also the author of Madness, winner of the National Poetry Series, and Bury It, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They’re the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion, with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry magazine, Granta, and elsewhere. sam has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, and MacDowell.

Mads Gobbo is a writer, illustrator, and book worker living in Los Angeles. In 2022, they co-founded Hand Follows Eye Studios, a mobile arts education business with a queer and feminist focus. Mads holds an MA in fiction from UC Davis and a BA from Kenyon College. In 2025, Mads published Double Black Diamond, a collaborative short story collection written with Miles Klee.