Students

Current Graduate Students

	Miguel Aguilera is a fiction and poetry writer from South LA, where he was born and raised. His work often centers on socio-economic struggles, immigration, and masculinity. His debut poetry collection, "The House of Forgotten Sinners," published in 2015, marked the beginning of his journey as a writer and author. While Miguel’s journey began with writing, his passion for creative expression soon expanded into supporting local artists. This drive led him to co-found and perform at Apiary, Music and Arts, a curated event space in Compton, CA. Alongside his writing, Miguel works in audio production, which allows him to work and collaborate with fascinating people across different artistic disciplines. His creative endeavors reflect his deep connection to his community and his need to explore the challenges they face.
	Ashley Alvarado (she/her) is an Inland Empire native. She studied Communication and Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with both subjects greatly influencing her style and interests as a writer. While she primarily writes creative nonfiction, she enjoys engaging with different genres and expanding her comfort zone. Her work tends to focus on grief, memory and genealogy, the environmental issues facing her community, and her own lived experience as a young queer woman. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing video games, swimming, and spending time with her friends and family.
	Katy Berry is a New York-based comedian, writer, and filmmaker with a penchant for chaos. As a performer, she's terrorized the stages of prestigious universities and venues, including The Kennedy Center (pre-Trump) and multiple sold-out Edinburgh Fringe Fest runs. Her original writing and videos have been featured in Vulture, Studio360, Bustle, Chortle, Reductress, The Guardian, NYC Web Fest, Tootsie’s Video Vault, Coney Island Film Festival and more. Her screenplay POPCORN earned her a place in the 2020 Black List and Women in Film Feature Residency. As an educator, Katy was a Senior Instructor of Screenwriting at New York Film Academy and created the curriculum for Brooklyn Comedy Collective’s Musical Improv Program. She continues to teach improv at festivals and schools globally, and is currently developing a feature to direct in 2027.
	Jason E. Chang was born and raised all over Los Angeles, which means absolutely nothing to him. It’s just a city, not another character. After working at a film school for over 15 years, he finally gave up at being discovered changing light bulbs and went back to school, earning his B.A. in 2022—in Liberal Studies, an actual subject. That said, he still hopes to justify the spot he took from more talented writers who applied to this program. This bio is for them.
	Elizabeth DeWolf is a fiction writer and editor of nonfiction books about politics and culture. Her previous work involved research and writing in the fields of sociology, architecture, urban design and planning, and public policy. Originally from Massachusetts, she's lived in Los Angeles since 2019, and when she's not writing, she likes to paint, see live music, and hike in Griffith Park with her dog Mazzy.
	Zite Ezeh -she/they- (Fiction) is a Nigerian-Kenyan-American writer who received their BA from Oberlin College in 2020. Zite's work often centers around love and belonging. It lives in liminal spaces--between the said and the unsaid. Their piece, "The Ruins," was published by Beyond Words Literary Magazine in 2023. When Zite is not writing, you can find them making music with their band, crocheting, or climbing up a hill to stare at the moon. Zite's center lies with the people they love.
	Johanna Keller Flores (she/her) is a Peruvian-American artist, born and raised on the Dakota Land of St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a writer, performer, administrator, puppeteer, teacher, and hard working Virgo. As a playwright she has written ANGELITA, Marixa y La Depre, Mal Ojo, and other plays and pieces. Johanna’s writing exists in the spaces where queerness, mixed Peruana identity, and generations of magic come together across time, reality and music. She is a 2025 MSAB Creative Individuals Grantee, a StorySeeds Screenwriting Fellow with Mamá Papaya, and a member of Exposed Brick Theater’s Playwriting Cohort. Johanna was also a 2023 LAMBDA Literary Playwriting Fellow, the 2022-2023 Many Voices Mentee at the Playwright's Center, a Teatro del Pueblo Visiones Fellow in 2023, a Q-Stage fellow in 2023 and an OurSpace Fellow with Twin Cities Media Alliance in 2021.
	Frederick X. García is a Xikanx poet and writer from Southern California. They are a first-year MFA candidate and earned their BA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry from UC Riverside in 2024. Their work explores identity, familial histories and inherited dynamics, and has been published in UC Riverside’s Mosaic Art & Literary Journal, Ancestral Futures Magazine, and Inlandia Institute’s 2022 Writing from Inlandia anthology. They are a 2024-25 Gluck Family Learning Fellow at UCR ARTS and a recipient of UCR’s Vice Provost Excellence Fellowship Award. They enjoy being in nature, laughing with loved ones, and ginger tea.
	Matt Harmon (he/they) is a playwright and musician who graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in International Studies and a minor in Playwriting. His dramatic works explore how interpersonal relationships use music and culture to express the ineffable. He was a lifelong Michigander before moving to California, but will always stand up against Midwest slander. When Matt isn’t writing, he’s scouring record stores for an original pressing of Blondie’s Parallel Lines, bricking open layups on the basketball court, or tearing up the dancefloor at 2am.
	Sara Hovda is a transgender woman poet and online entertainer from rural Minnesota. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines such as Frontier Poetry, Nimrod, and Nashville Review, among others. She writes about queerness, family, rural landscapes, and the places where those things interconnect. She is definitely better than you at video games.
	Daniel Kuo is a fiction writer and attorney. He grew up in New Mexico, is a graduate of Pomona College and Stanford Law School, and comes to UC Riverside from Berkeley, California. His short fiction has appeared in Red Rock Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Hyphen, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and longlisted for the Disquiet International Prize. He’s currently working on a novel. He really likes breakfast burritos.
	Ian Lewis is a filmmaker, radio producer, and writer. His work has been published by Signal Hill and The Dig, and screened at Ballroom Marfa and the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, among others. Originally from Massachusetts, he has spent the last dozen years living in West Texas, where he mostly worked as a broadcast engineer. There, he also runs The Beach, a low-power FM station for long-duration audio work. A graduate of St. John's College in 2024 (Sanskrit/eastern studies) and UC Santa Cruz in 2013 (physics, philosophy), he is happy to once again be playing in a UC Gamelan ensemble.
	Abigail Pak is a Korean-American writer from Southern California whose poems often center around connection, queerness, religious tension, and memory. She studied English and Gender Studies at Westmont College and has been published in several journals both in print and online. She enjoys spending time with friends and family, her dog, watching crime procedurals, and ceramics.
	Kinjal Potdar (she/her) is an Indian American playwright and screenwriter from New Jersey. Her work centers loss, resilience, and wonder in worlds that blend the real with the fantastical. She graduated with honors from Smith College where she studied sociology and neuroscience, which inform her writing. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer and baking focaccia bread portraits.
	Baylee Shlichtman writes about the epic in the intimate and the magical in the mundane. Her play Symbiotic, which she wrote here at UC Riverside, was awarded the 2026 Louise Wigglesworth Award for Excellence in Playwriting and received further development with Wild Imaginings, EST/LA, and the Curtis Theatre. Other full-length plays include Good Romans (PlayGround, Finalist for 2026 Words Cubed at Utah Shakespeare Festival), How the League of Evil Cowboy Clowns Took Down the Flapman For Good (Semi-finalist for 2026 Seven Devils New Play Foundry, The Workshop Theatre), The House of Flightless Birds (AlterTheatre, Curtis Theatre, TYA ThinkTank, Vision Latino), In the Mouth of the Beast (New Relic Theatre, Longlist for 2025 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award, Urbanite Theatre, The Vagrancy Theatre) and You’ll Be Made of Ashes Too (Flamboyán Productions, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Semi-finalist for 2025 Ojai Playwrights Conference). Upcoming publications with Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Company, Smith & Krauss, and Concord Theatricals.
	Ojaswi Sharma is a first-year fiction candidate from Chandigarh, India. She writes about women, gender, and our cumulative presence as humans, and also loves envisioning alternative futures. She is interested in a variety of art forms, cultural critique, the study of language, and evolution. She has previously worked in writing, editing, journalism, social justice, and teaching. She got her bachelor's in English and political philosophy at Saint Mary's College of California, and was a 2023 publishing fellow at LA Review of Books. Whenever she gets the chance, she loves to adventure and try new things, explore different art forms, travel, and read anything she can get her hands on.
	Sam Stein <(Screenwriting, he/him) is a writer of all sorts. After growing up in Madison, Connecticut, he graduated from Pace University’s New York City campus in 2025, winning awards for his screenplays, essays, and comic book scripts. Sam likes to write about the cartoon characters he has bouncing around in his head, usually by placing them in fantastical settings and/or dream-like scenarios. Outside of writing, Sam likes playing/watching video games, board games, card games, improv games, baseball games, and game shows, and dreams about winning them all someday.
	Adrian Villarreal (fiction) is a Chicano short story writer born and raised in Los Angeles. His stories tend to gravitate toward the supernatural, horror, magical realism, and noir. His work has been published in Vortex and Passages. He was an associate editor at sin cesar (formally Dryland), a black and brown literary journal based in South Central Los Angeles. When not reading or writing, Adrian enjoys spending quality time with his partner (hiking), ballin’ out with the homies (soccer), playing with his pup (training), and kickin’ it with his loved ones (carne asadas).
	Veronica Vo -she/her- (Creative Nonfiction) was born in Texas and raised in California. From UCSB she earned degrees in psychological and brain sciences, communication, and a minor in journalism. She is interested in personal essays and stories about family and identity, and in exploring different genres. She enjoys Ghibli movies and matcha lattes.
	Tatiana Yoon is a mother, immigrant, writer, and co-editor of the literary zine Interval. Her fiction and nonfiction works have been published in Russian, English, and Estonian languages. In 2023, she developed a writing course for mothers titled "Mothers’ Co-Writing." Her work frequently delves into themes of immigration, intercultural experiences, and motherhood.
	Cecilia Zugel is an MFA student in Screenwriting at UC Riverside who loves writing satires and dark comedies about girls trapped in tough situations, tracking the ways in which they escape and flourish or spiral into even worse straits. She often writes screenplays and creative nonfiction pieces about e(x)vangelicalism, sexuality, OCD, and mental health, pulling inspiration from real life experiences. While at UCR, Ceci has trained in standup comedy with Upright Citizens Brigade, interned on the Editorial Content team at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, worked as a casting intern at CCA Casting Agency, and volunteered as a script reader for American High. Before beginning her MFA, Ceci worked in grant writing at the (pre-takeover!) Kennedy Center and wrote and performed sketch comedy with DC’s very own Unofficial Late Night. Besides ULN and local standup, Ceci's performance credits include the short films Loves Me Not (Tara) and IRL: In Real Life (Kiki). Also an avid singer, Ceci has appeared in many recitals, musicals, and plays including Lend Me a Soprano (Elena), Oliver! (Mrs. Sowerberry), and her own ten-minute play, Proximity (Claire).