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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. |
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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. |
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Noah Amir Arjomand (Screenwriting) is an Iranian-American filmmaker and author. His first (co-directed, co-produced) feature-length documentary, Eat Your Catfish, is about his mother’s last years with the motor-neuron disease ALS. The film premiered in 2021 at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam and won Best Documentary at Istanbul Film Festival. Cambridge University Press published Noah’s first book, Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria, in 2022. Fixing Stories explores the worlds of the “fixers” who act as brokers between foreign reporters and local sources from behind the scenes. He has also written about politics, culture, and media in Middle East and Central Asia for Dissent, Public Culture, Tehran Bureau, The Afghanistan Analysts Network, Profil, American Anthropologist, The New Arab, and others. Noah earned a PhD in sociology from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University. Before coming to Riverside, Noah lived in Bloomington, Indiana, where he taught at Indiana University. He likes cats and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. |
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Kori Chaney is a New Orleans native, with a deep passion for film, writing, music, and drawing. She graduated with her Bachelor’s in English with concentrations in both Creative Writing and Film Studies from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. She was also the Co-Editor of her school journal the Nicholls’ Mosaic – where she published two poems, the Co-President of the Creative Writing Club, an Editor for the Humanities Journal Chênière, and a Radio DJ under the name DJ Lotus. Kori has a deep love of Neo-Westerns and is currently writing her second feature about the Cowboy culture in New Orleans. When she isn’t writing, you can find her playing with her Pomeranian, listening to either BTS or Beyoncé, watching One Piece, or drinking an iced strawberry matcha latte. |
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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. |
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Gabby Chavez is a writer, director, cat mom, and California native who earned her BA in Theater, Film, and Digital Production with a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies at UCR. Now, at the graduate level, she is focusing on writing stories about power dynamics, sexual violence and cults. Not just the Kool-Aid kinds, but the ones we don't realize are cults until it's too late: MLM's, greek life, and corporate businesses. In both her art and personal life, she stays a devoted advocate for survivors of sexual violence and harassment and would like to highlight the organization RAINN as a valuable resource for survivors. |
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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. |
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Manny Dueñas (Screenwriting) is a writer from Gilroy, California. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2022 with a major in English and Filmmaking. Manny's writing explores facets of existentialism through surreal settings and traumatized characters. Moreover, his work is violently romantic, dark-humored, psychological, and absurdist. His art aims to reconcile the duality between these concepts and deeper spiritual truths. Manny is never not writing, watching films, or reading. However, in his spare time, he enjoys exercise, yoga, and the occasional coffee & cigarette. |
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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. |
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Kelsey Ferrell - she/her - (Creative Nonfiction) grew up on the central coast of California. She earned her B.A. at UC Berkeley in 2020 with a major in Development Studies (which now is known as Global Studies) and minors in both Global Poverty & Practice and Journalism. While attending college she wrote and edited satire for The Free Peach, was an active member of Songwriting at Berkeley, wrote and released her first album Trauma Portfolio, studied abroad at the University of Sussex, and began performing stand up comedy. After college, she released more music, used her library card often, and lived in Los Angeles pursuing her creative aspirations while working at a cat cafe. In 2022, Kelsey moved to Riverside to begin her MFA, where she continued with the same passions, alongside new pursuits of screenwriting, film making, and educating! It was here in Riverside that she directed and produced her first film, Donkumentary, starring Riverside's feral donkey herds. She was a finalist for the 2022 Barry Lopez Prize for Nonfiction, the runner up of the 2024 Honeybee Prize for Nonfiction, the winner of the 2024 L.M. and Marcia McQuern Endowed Graduate Award in Nonfiction Writing, a two time recipient of The Gluck Fellowship for the Arts in 2023 and 2024, and a recipient of a 2024 Outstanding TA Award. Her writing has appeared in The Good Life Review. Kelsey’s writing explores the interplay of need and greed and the impact of such on individual and collective pain. She dreams of one day having some cats and a house with a library that has rolling ladders. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Emma Howard is a playwright from Stephen King land in Maine. They got into playwriting while studying acting at the Experimental Theatre Wing in undergrad where they took out a lot of student loans to roll around on the floor and create postmodern movement pieces. After college they spent time performing site-specific work in people’s kitchens before moving to Baltimore and working in public mental health, a formative experience from which they are still recovering. Relatedly, most of their work explores sexual violence, radical psychiatry, and the complicated ethics of desire—they often try to make these things funny, with varying degrees of success. They love physical comedy and have taken workshops at the Celebration Barn as well as Patch Adams’s Gesundheit Institute, and they co-wrote/acted in a short film called Protect the Pigeons from Used Condoms, a piece universally hated by their loved ones that elicited such responses as “you made something,” “there’s probably an audience for this somewhere,” and “I guess it has a sort of John Waters-esque quality? Maybe I’d like it if I were more into John Waters.” |
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Ammie Jergenson (she/her) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre and a minor in English from Viterbo University. She writes plays, poetry, and creative nonfiction, and themes of her work include disability, friendship, love, and the Midwest--typically with a bit of sarcastic humor woven in. Her work has been published in The Albion Review and Touchstone Magazine. She is originally from Minnesota and appreciates California winters. |
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Cait Johnson is a poet born and raised in the Inland Empire. Outside of school and writing, Cait helps run Art of Nothing Press, a local artist collective and publication. |
| Aaron Justvig -he/him/his- (Playwriting) grew up in St. George, Utah and graduated from BYU in Theatre Arts Studies with minors in Psychology and Creative Writing. Going into middle school, he had no interest in the arts until his brother Andrew (a graduate of the Creative Writing in the Performing Arts program at UCR) told him that theatre was like playing the games they played on "Whose Line is it Anyway?" and from then on his future was sealed. Aaron has worked in dozens of theatre productions across various professions, including light design and tech, wardrobe, hair and makeup, as a performer and choreographer, and as a playwright (his two short plays, "Moonlit Memoirs" and "An Insomniac and a Harbinger of Doom Talk on a Bridge," were both produced by the Student Theatre Association at BYU.) He also has a background in fiction writing and filmmaking (he completed a draft of his first novel last year and is currently working on a draft of his second novel; his short film "Benzodiazepine Ballet, or (A Brief History of My Room) was selected to compete in the Final Cut Film Festival at BYU.) He is ecstatic to be at UCR and cannot wait for the opportunities to create great art. He would like to thank his friends and mentors at BYU for the help and knowledge they've given him and family for their continued support. | |
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Koto Katayama is a writer/producer born and raised in Tokyo, who later spent four years at Kenyon College producing films. She has worked in film development and distribution, as well as on the set of the TV series “SUNNY” from A24 and “And Just Like That… (Sex and the City)” from HBO, and production coordinated on indie feature and short films on the east coast. She wishes she could write the next High School Musical (with an international cast and more rap), but most of her female angst recently goes towards writing horror scripts that she wouldn’t have the nerve to watch if they were made into a movie. |
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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. |
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Frances McCann is a Southern writer who graduated with a bachelors in English literature and creative writing from LSU in 2022. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of California, Riverside. Her work focuses on grief, food and eating, and Black issues. When she is not writing she practices yoga, tries not to lose at Just Dance, and plays pool with her boyfriend. |
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Melizza Minger Urquilla is a playwright from Los Angeles. She graduated from Cal State LA with a BA in English with a Theatre minor in 2018. She primarily writes about the Salvadorian diaspora, migration, and the lives of women. When not writing she enjoys spending time with her two cats. |
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Hanna Pachman is a poet, whose work has been published by Rattle, The MacGuffin, Catamaran, Maudlin House, and others. She hosts and curates a poetry event which has been running since 2018. Hanna was an Assistant Editor for the poetry magazine, Gyroscope Review for two years. She has performed poetry at many established places, including the KGB Bar, the Poetry Circus, and Rockwood Music Hall. hannapatricepachman.com |
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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. |
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Artur Pereira (Screenwriting) is a Brazilian 3D Artist born and raised in the grand city of São Paulo. He graduated from the University of Hertfordshire with a BAHons in 3D animation and visual effects. During his studies he worked as a writer and director in many animated shorts and games as well as working as a Previs Artist in a live action Netflix production. His writing explores immorality, ambition and violence through the rose colored lenses of fantasy and science fiction. |
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Debbie Ou is a third-year fiction candidate at UCR. She has received past honors such as the Jacob H. Hollander award, the James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship, and the Abraham Lincoln Polonsky Endowed Award. She has previously published work in the Birmingham Poetry Review and the Sewanee Theological Review, and lives in Los Angeles. Her work is an exploration of the ways in which people fail to connect with each other.
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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. |
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Trinity Thompson (Screenwriting) is a writer, educator, and organizer who proudly hails from Honolulu. She grew up witnessing the power of storytelling as a tool for individual exploration and collective liberation. Whether in her writing or organizing, Trinity loves creating worlds of BIPOC belonging and transcendence. She most enjoys experimental and genre-bending forms of art and is particularly interested in exploring the complex and seemingly contradictory aspects of identity in her writing. A graduate of Stanford University, Trinity studied creative writing, ethnic studies, and sociology. She also completed UCLA's Professional Program in Television Writing and has written for and about her community as an Oakland Voices correspondent. She identifies as a film lover, pop culture fiend, ice cream aficionado, and too competitive for her own good. |
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Kali Veach is a writer and filmmaker originally from the Ozarks of Missouri. Her short films have screened at festivals at home and abroad and is currently at work on her first feature. |
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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). |
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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. |
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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. |