Meet our 2025 Conference Teaching Fellows

Shipra Agarwal is a doctor-turned-writer from India, pursuing an MFA in fiction at Arizona State University. Her work exploring the weaponization of shame in collectivist cultures has been published in Witness Magazine and The Rumpus, awarded second place in the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Awards, nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize and the Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the First Pages Prize and the Iron Horse Long Story Prize, and supported by a Tin House Summer Workshop scholarship, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts, an Anaphora Arts scholarship, and a fellowship at the Authentic Voices Program. Shipra is the Co Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net. She is working on a novel-in-stories.

Ashley Naftule is a writer, performer, and the Associate Artistic Director at Space55 theatre in downtown Phoenix. They’ve written and produced 8 full-length plays: Ear, The First Annual Bookburners Convention, The Canterbury Tarot, Radio Free Europa, The Hidden Sea, Orange Skies, Roger & Gene, and Selena and Judy Go Dancing. Their ninth play, Peppermint Beehive, is set to premiere in spring 2026 at Space55. As a freelance journalist their work has been published in The AV Club, Pitchfork, Phoenix New Times, The Outline, Daily Bandcamp, Vice, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Fanbyte, Cleveland Review of Books, and AZCentral.

Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing and narrative medicine at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon, 2024). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Parks Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library’s Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s the current poet laureate for the State of Kansas.

Kianah Brooks joined the digital learning community at Arizona State University in 2021. She holds a Bachelor and Master’s degree in Human Environmental Sciences from The University of Alabama. Kianah is a Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA) and Teach for America (TFA) AmeriCorps Alumni. She completed a year of service as a Volunteer Coordinator with United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona. Before transitioning into digital learning in higher education, she spent 2 years as a middle school social studies teacher. She is a poet and has been a Teaching Artist with Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing since 2023.  

Jeremy Broyles is an Arizona native, originally from the Cottonwood-Jerome-Sedona high desert. He holds a B.A. from Doane College (2001), now University, an M.A. from Northern Arizona University (2008), and an MFA from Wichita State University (2011). His work has appeared in The MacGuffin, Pembroke Magazine, Red Rock Review, and Blue Earth Review amongst many others. His novel, Flat Water, was published by Main Street Rag Press, and his short story collection, Gutshots and Second Thoughts, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. He is an aging rider of bicycles, a talentless surfer of waves, and a happily mediocre player of guitars.

Hanna Ghabhain is a storyteller exploring the intersections of intergenerational somatic memory, mythology, and ecology. An award-winning journalist, she has written human-interest stories for numerous publications over the past 12 years. She holds a bachelor’s of science in psychology and graduates with a master of counseling from Arizona State University in Fall 2025. She is a Gestalt, Jungian, and Psychodynamic pre-licensed clinician providing therapeutic care to adults who have experienced trauma. Ghabhain is an Irish-American woman who applies psychological theories to Irish mythology, emphasizing the connection between intergenerational somatics and ecology. Her work explores how healing can be rooted in connection with storytelling and landscapes. She is a 2025 teaching fellow for the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference, presenting on how the Jungian concept of Universal Mind creates a cognitive and somatic web across time and how writers today can continue to be weavers in this ancient tapestry of storytelling.

Chiara Naomi Kaufman is a writer and translator in Tempe, Arizona. They are currently an MFA candidate and educator at Arizona State University, and the Fiction Editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review. Their writing has received support from the The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, the Wesleyan University Hamilton Prize, the Key West Literary Seminar, and BackDraft Live: a one-time Guernica workshop.

Jarrett Kaufman has been awarded scholarships from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the Cambridge Writers Workshop, and the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference. His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won numerous literary awards, including the Mary Mackey Fiction Award, the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award, the Missouri Writers Guild President’s Award for Fiction, and the Ernest Hemingway Flash Fiction Prize. His stories have been published in numerous literary journals. Most recently, his work has been published in Fiction Southeast, Arkansas Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and The South Dakota Review.

Natasha Muhametzyanova is a fiction writer from Turkmenabat, Turkmenistan. She currently lives and writes in St. Louis, MO, where she received her MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis. Natasha had served as an editorial intern at Dorothy, a publishing project and a prose reader at Quarterly West. You can read her latest short story in Miracle Monocle's 2024 anthology series.

Ashley Naftule is a writer, performer, and the Associate Artistic Director at Space55 theatre in downtown Phoenix. They’ve written and produced 8 full-length plays: Ear, The First Annual Bookburners Convention, The Canterbury Tarot, Radio Free Europa, The Hidden Sea, Orange Skies, Roger & Gene, and Selena and Judy Go Dancing. Their ninth play, Peppermint Beehive, is set to premiere in spring 2026 at Space55. As a freelance journalist their work has been published in The AV Club, Pitchfork, Phoenix New Times, The Outline, Daily Bandcamp, Vice, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Fanbyte, Cleveland Review of Books, and AZCentral.

Tyraé Tanner is a literacy architect, curriculum strategist, and educator whose work spans California, Texas, and Georgia. She has served as a teacher, assistant principal, and literacy leader within one of the nation’s top-performing charter networks, where she develops culturally grounded, Science of Reading–aligned literacy frameworks. Her focus lies in restoring the power of the writing strand—especially for African American and multilingual students navigating the layered impacts of language bias and early literacy laws. She is a member of the Georgia and International Literacy Associations and facilitates professional development for educators across the Southeast. Outside of schools, she curates literacy events like “The Literary Ladies Lounge,” a book-centered sanctuary for Black women across generations. Her work is rooted in the belief that writing is not just academic—it’s ancestral, liberatory, and deeply human.

Elizabeth Kate Switaj, originally from Seattle, currently works at the College of the Marshall Islands on Majuro Atoll. She is the author most recently of Serial Experiments (Alien Buddha Press, 2025), The Articulations (Kernpunkt Press, 2024), and The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio (11:11 Press, 2022). Previously, she taught English in Japan and China.

Kim Todd is the award-winning author of four books of literary nonfiction. Her most recent, Sensational: The Hidden History of America's “Girl Stunt Reporters,” was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Richard Frisbee Nonfiction Award. Other books include Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis and Sparrow. Her essays have appeared in Smithsonian, Ecotone, Sierra Magazine, Orion, and Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies, among other publications. She is a member of the MFA faculty at the University of Minnesota and lives in Minneapolis with her family. You can find her at www.kimtodd.net.

Max Wheeler is a trans writer and teacher from Oakland, CA. His work is forthcoming or can be found in Gulf Coast, trampset, Astrolabe, Beaver Magazine, and elsewhere. His short story about a snail was included in Best Small Fictions 2024. He is currently living in the Sonoran Desert, pursuing an MFA at Arizona State University and making friends with the cacti and the birds.