ERIKA SCHICKEL
Erika Schickel has been writing, teaching and performing first-person stories for close to forty years.
Erika got her start in theater penning monologues and performing one-woman shows in New York and Los Angeles. Her 1998 one-woman show “Wild Amerika,” developed first at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, was produced by LA Theater Works for the award-winning program, “The Play’s the Thing,” Erika has also worked extensively with the Blue Man Group, writing and recording voice-overs for their award-winning show “Tubes” at the Astor Theater.
Motherhood turned Erika into stay-at-home writer, so she left the stage for the page, writing funny, honest essays about parenting for the LA Weekly, LA City Beat, HipMama.com, Salon.com, BustMagazine and various other outlets. Those essays were collected into her first book: You’re Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom (Kensington, 2007). The book was an early and notable entry in the “momoir” wave of the ‘aughts with one reviewer dubbing Schickel, “Erma Bombeck in Leather.”
Erika kept freelancing over the twelve years it took her to write her second book, The Big Hurt (Hachette, 2021). This full-length memoir tells a complex story of love and betrayal in a New England boarding school, and how that story haunted Erika into adulthood. The Los Angeles Review of Books called The Big Hurt “sharp-tongued and darkly hilarious […] one of the more relentlessly honest, big-hearted reckonings with abuse to come out of the #MeToo era.”
All along this journey, Erika has been teaching and mentoring other writers. She has worked with underserved teens through Write Girl LA, and the Hamburger House, and also taught monologue at the Loomis Chaffee School in Connecticut. She has mentored emerging writers through PEN West, and through the UCLA Writer’s Program. She is a regular guest-lecturer in the journalism program at Mount St. Mary College. Erika has been teaching memoir and creativity workshops at the Writing Pad since 2021.
Erika, is a survivor of the 2025 Eaton Fire, and is currently writing a Substack called, “Girl of the Burning West.” She lives in Eagle Rock with her boyfriend and two cats.
KERRI RANDLES
Kerri Randles is a writer, filmmaker, actress, and creative advisor whose work is rooted in emotionally honest, character-driven storytelling.
Kerri began her career on the stage in Chicago, studying theater with Second City and Mick Napier at the Annoyance Theater, before moving to Los Angeles, where she spent three decades working in independent film and television. As an actress, she worked with acclaimed directors including Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, and Clint Eastwood.
While her years in front of the camera gave her an instinct for performance and character, it was screenwriting and directing that ultimately shaped her voice as a storyteller. Inspired by the character-driven films of the 1970s, Kerri believes the most memorable stories begin with emotional truth.
Her directorial debut, Midnight Girl, premiered on the festival circuit in 2023, earning recognition for writing, directing, and performance, and marked the beginning of a new chapter behind the camera.
In 2010, Kerri wrote, produced, and performed the critically acclaimed one-woman show Can't You Hear Me Knockin'?, which premiered in Los Angeles before traveling to New York City and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The deeply personal work became the foundation for her forthcoming memoir Can’t You Hear Me Knockin? and continues to inform her approach to narrative.
As co-founder of The Big Story and the Sonoma School of Drama, Kerri has an instinct for recognizing the emotional heartbeat of an artist's work. Drawing on her background in acting, filmmaking, story development and an advisor to artists, she helps writers identify what is most authentic and emotionally resonant, shaping stories that are both deeply personal and universally compelling.
Whether working with first-time memoirists or experienced screenwriters, her passion is helping writers discover the story only they can tell—and giving them confidence and creative courage to bring it fully to the page.