Speakers & Guests
Our Guests of Honor and the speakers bringing the program to life. More guests to be announced.
Guests of Honor
Brian Evenson
Author of Immobility, The Warren, and Last Days. Teaches creative writing at CalArts. His unsettling, philosophically charged fiction sits at the intersection of literary horror and speculative brilliance.
Sarah Langan
Author of Good Neighbors and A Better World. Three-time Bram Stoker Award winner and founding board member of the Shirley Jackson Awards. Her work dissects suburban dread with surgical precision.
Tim Powers
Legendary author who knew Philip K. Dick personally and a multiple World Fantasy Award winner. His secret-history novels are monuments of the genre. At the festival he leads a panel on PKD’s Orange County years alongside Phil’s old friends.
Speakers
Jonathan Lethem
Author of Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and numerous works examining the PKD legacy. A bridge between literary fiction and speculative worlds.
Howard A. Rodman
Screenwriter and novelist. Former president of the Writers Guild of America West. Author of The Great Eastern.
James P. Blaylock
A Southern California writer and winner of the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award and the World Fantasy Award. Part of Philip K. Dick’s Orange County circle, he has taught writing at Chapman University for decades.
Lavie Tidhar
World Fantasy Award-winning author of Osama, Central Station, and A Man Lies Dreaming. Co-writer of the film IO, screening at the festival.
David Agranoff
Author, podcaster (Dickheads), and driving force behind the PKD Festival. Co-writer of the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch TV pilot script.
Keith Giles
Author, publisher of the Pink Beam novella series, and co-editor of the forthcoming Dickopedia. Brings practical vision and publishing expertise to the festival.
Anthony Trevino
Co-writer of the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch TV pilot script and former Dickheads podcast co-host. Pink Beam novella author.
D. Harlan Wilson
Author, critic, and publisher behind Anti-Oedipus Press. Joins the festival’s publishing panel and conducts several of its interviews.
Lord Running Clam
PKD-community author publishing with Wide Books. Appears on the festival’s publishing panel.
Randall Christopher
Filmmaker and animator. Director of The Gun, adapted from the Philip K. Dick story, screening at the festival.
Nir Yaniv
Israeli author, musician, and filmmaker. Director of IO, co-written with Lavie Tidhar, screening at the festival.
Maer Wilson
Author and part of Philip K. Dick’s Orange County circle. Joins the panel on PKD’s Orange County years.
Cliff Jones Jr.
Writer and literary voice in the PKD community.
Lisa Morton
Wrote and directed the Radio Free Albemuth play in 1990s Los Angeles. Returning to direct the table read at the fest, casting from the original LA actors where possible.
Langhorne J. Tweed
Joins the Live Dickheads Podcast and PKD in Orange County Trivia on opening night.
Linda Castellani
A friend from Philip K. Dick’s Orange County years. Joins the panel on PKD’s time in Orange County.
Merry Lou Staylor
A friend from Philip K. Dick’s Orange County years. Joins the panel on PKD’s time in Orange County.
David Gill
PKD scholar behind the Total Dickhead blog and chief troublemaker at the Point Reyes Reality Investigation Center. Presents on Philip K. Dick’s years in Point Reyes Station.
William Sarill
Scholar who briefly lived with Philip K. Dick and talked with him about the universe. Presents a psychospiritual portrait of PKD and joins the Sunday dialogue on his sense of time.
Gregg Rickman
Philip K. Dick biographer. Presents “On the Empathy Box” and joins the Sunday dialogue on PKD’s sense of time.
Ted Hand
Scholar of esotericism and Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis. Presents QueryPat, a digital-humanities resource for the study of PKD.
Blake Wilson
Presents “The Conquest of Death and the Divine Afterlife.”
Patrick Sharp
Scholar of science fiction studies. Co-presents the SFAM / WorldCon preview.
Eric Canin
Presents an anthropological view of techno-animism in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Cat Celebrezze
Presents “Delicious Garbage: Language, Neologisms, and Reality in Philip K. Dick.”
Raj Chandarlapaty
Presents “Narcotheorist Projections in the Science Fiction Era.”
Nikita Alligire
Presents “Ideology on Mars: A Comparative Reading of Bogdanov’s Red Star and Dick’s Martian Time-Slip.”
Tom Scholte
Presents “Dickian Intimations of the Human/Android in Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me.”
Drew S. Burk
Editor and translator with the University of Minnesota Press. Joins the publishing panel and presents “Processing the Future: VALIS and Visions of Horselover Fat.”
David Sander
Scholar and moderator. Hosts the panel on Philip K. Dick’s Orange County years.
Jeffrey Sithi-Amnuai
Cal-State Fullerton student. Presents “Are Electric Sheep Just AI Slop? On Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Generative AI.”
Alli Dubin
Cal-State Fullerton student. Presents “Taking Donna Back: Gender and Sexuality in A Scanner Darkly.”
Hector Arzola
Cal-State Fullerton student. Presents “Pink Light Visions and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Breaking out of PKD’s Black Iron Prison.”
Rodrigo Barwick
Cal-State Fullerton student. Presents “What Does a Scanner See? Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus and A Scanner Darkly.”
Yahir Gonzalez
Cal-State Fullerton student. Presents “I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe: Lyotard’s Differend and Blade Runner.”
More speakers will be announced as programming is finalized.
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