More about Jervey Tervalon

Jervey Tervalon is one of the instructors in the Summer Institute. He is an African-American novelist and journalist born and raised in New Orleans as well as in South Central Los Angeles. Tervalon is the author of five novels including Understand This for which he won the Quality Paper Book Club’s New Voice’s Award. He studied writing at UC Irvine with Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s List. He was awarded the Key to the City of New Orleans for his best-selling novel, Dead Above Ground set in New Orleans. He was selected as a Disney Screenwriting fellow, and commissioned to adapt a novel and short story for the South Coast Repertory Theater. He currently teaches Race and Media at UCLA and Creative Writing at USC. Recently he has written a series of columns for the L.A. Weekly about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath based on first-hand emails and phone calls from his family who are now scattered throughout the South.

Students studying with Jervey in the summer institute will develop in a fast paced workshop and auto-biograhical piece focusing on family community and family life using using words and photography.