MFA Presents and Community Writers 2026

Shipra Agarwal is a doctor-turned-writer from India pursuing an MFA in fiction at Arizona State University, where she received the Swarthout Award in Writing. Her work is published in Witness and The Rumpus, 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, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Anaphora Arts, and 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.

Argent Martinez Brito is a poet, filmmaker, and painter from the Southwest Side of Chicago. She’s received the Arizona Artists Opportunity Grant, two consecutive Amiri Baraka Scholarships from Naropa University, the Frances Mason Harris ’26 Prize, and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award. She is currently researching Queer Utopianism in experimental media, poetry, and VEVO music videos.

Avery C. Castillo (she/her) is a chronically ill poet, artist, and editor from South Texas. She is an alumna of Texas Tech University with a BA in English and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Nerve to Write, The Rumpus, WSQ, Rogue Agent, Huizache, Latino Book Review, and elsewhere.

Tsong Chang (She/They) is a poet, fiction writer, and literary translator. Their translation work focuses on contemporary Chinese poetry, especially by queer and female poets. You can find their translation in Asymptote and Poetry International Online, and their short story in Epiphany: A Literary Journal. Pursuing an MFA in Fiction at Arizona State University, they are the incoming translation editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review.  

Veronica Fletcher is a poet and writer from South Florida. Her work appears, or is forthcoming, in South Florida Poetry Journal, Rust & Moth, Gyroscope Review, The Shore, and more. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee, where she serves as poetry co-editor for Grist Journal. She works as a reader for Palette Poetry.

Katie Grierson is a poet diligently working on her MFA at Arizona State University and has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets College Prizes, the National YoungArts Foundation, and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. She has also received scholarships and fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. You can find her work in wildness, among other places. She hopes to one day become a beam of light.

Fiona Martinez is a queer poet from Boise, Idaho, and an MFA writing student at UC San Diego. Her hybrid work embodies the natural world to queer the border between human and nonhuman beings, experiences of mixed identity, and the entanglement of violence and tenderness in our shared work toward liberation.

Lucy Ruth Martinez is a poet inspired by her descendance from Diné women, Chicane ancestry, and Samoan heritage. From the Northwest New Mexican Mesas, Lucy Ruth is currently completing her MFA in Poetry at Arizona State University. She believes that the desert will always call her back home, whether it is the Southwestern Sonoran Desert or the sacred mountains of Mt. Taylor. She has been published in El Portal and Quarter(ly) Press.

Kristin Montez is a writer-filmmaker living with stage three chronic kidney disease (CKD) and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where she teaches creative writing. She has developed programs and workshops on the craft of screenwriting and experimental cinema.

Cora Schipa is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she is the poetry co-editor of Grist, the assistant managing editor of Crab Creek Review, and a creative writing mentor with WriteGirl. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Third Coast, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, Harpur Palate, Peatsmoke, Cola Literary Review, Rust & Moth, The Shore, and Gulf Stream, among others. Find her at coraschipa.com.

fatima abby tall (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in Southern Idaho and Dakar, Senegal. fatima is interested in spiritual alterity, the (un)dead, and the ways in which the textual becomes visual.

Chloe Vela is a cartoonist, writer, Editor-in-Chief of The Meat Puppet, and instructor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She holds degrees in both Fine Arts and English. She has been published in both prose and comics and has hosted panels, workshops, and cartoonist events at her university.

Max Wheeler is a trans writer and teacher from Oakland, California. His work can be found in Split Lip, Gulf Coast, trampset, Astrolabe, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and his short story about a snail was included in Best Small Fictions 2024. He is the translations editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. You can find him these days in the Sonoran Desert, pursuing an MFA at Arizona State University and making friends with the cacti and the birds.

Klytie Xu is a writer and artist from California. She wonders how language and visual art conspire together on and off the page. Klytie is currently an MFA student at UC San Diego, where she is exploring lineage and memory through text and image.

Shipra Agarwal is a doctor-turned-brand manager-turned-writer from India pursuing an MFA in fiction at Arizona State University. Winner of the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Awards, Shipra has been published in Witness Magazine and The Rumpus, nominated for the PEN/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, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Authentic Voices Fellowship. She is the editor-in-chief of Best of the Net and is currently working on a novel and an essay collection.

Elizabeth Agans was born in a small town in Northern Illinois. She moved with her immediate family to Phoenix, Arizona, when she was six years old, and considers herself a child of the desert. She graduated from Arizona State University with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both English (Creative Writing) and Psychology, and received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Florida. Her work can be found in Anti-Heroin Chic, Shrew Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently a Teaching Artist at Arizona State University, facilitating community writing workshops.

Hailey Alcaraz writes multicultural coming-of-age books about girls using their heartbreak to change the world. She began her writing career in the sixth grade as a Kid Reporter for Time for Kids and remains passionate about crafting stories about identity, love, and resilience. She is the author of two YA novels, Up in Flames and Rosa by Any Other Name, a Pura Belpré Award Honor Book, as well as the forthcoming middle-grade novel Five Days at the Hotel Adams. Hailey lives in Scottsdale with her husband, two daughters, and precocious German shepherd, Lemon.

Genevieve Arlie (they/she) is a genderfluid mestize Californian and swimmer with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. A graduate of Stanford and Columbia, they also hold an MFA in translation from Iowa, where they were an Arts Fellow, and a PhD in English–creative writing from the University of Georgia, where they were a Presidential Fellow. They have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Best Small Fictions and made alternate for a US Student Fulbright arts grant to France. Their work appears in Annulet, Hidden Compass, Tupelo Quarterly, Zoeglossia’s poem of the week, the Poetry Foundation archive, and elsewhere.

Stephanie Austin is the author of Something I Might Say, a CNF chapbook (WTAW Press); Burn, a novel (Cowboy Jamboree Press); and the forthcoming story collection I’m Glad You Didn’t Drown Yourself from BOA Editions. Her stories and essays have been published in more than 25 literary journals including The Sun and American Short Fiction. She lives and teaches writing in Phoenix, AZ. You can find out more at her website stephanieaustin.net. 

Diamond Braxton (MANTÉ) (they/she) is a writer, editor, publisher, and educator based in Texas. Their work has appeared in Autostraddle, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, Foglifter, The Forge, and others. They were awarded the Carol Shields Residency at Hedgebrook in 2025. They are the founder and director of Abode Press, a 501(c)(3) anti-racist press run by people of color and queer and/or trans folks that publishes books reminding them of home.

Cloud Delfina Cardona (she/they) is an artist, writer, and book cover designer from San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of What Remains, winner of the 2020 Host Publications Chapbook Prize, and the past is a jean jacket (Hub City Press), winner of the Naomi Shihab Nye First Book of Poetry Award. Their poetry has appeared in The Offing, Prairie Schooner, The Boiler, The Los Angeles Review, and more. She is the co-founder of Infrarrealista Review, a literary nonprofit that publishes Texan voices. Cardona currently works as an associate for Letras Latinas and moonlights as DJ Mexistentialism. 

Sylvia Chan is an amputee-cyborg writer, educator, activist, and author of We Remain Traditional (Center for Literary Publishing, 2018). Her poetry and essays have appeared in Poetry, Zócalo Public Square, The Cincinnati Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others, and her work has been recognized as a National Poetry Series finalist and a Best American Essays notable selection. Chan has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Zoeglossia, Bolt Cutters, and The Center for Art and Advocacy’s Right of Return. She lives in Tucson, where she works with crossover and foster youth, as well as writers impacted by the criminal justice system.

Corie Cisco (she/her) is a Faculty Librarian at Glendale Community College whose work centers on inclusive collections, student engagement, and community-centered programming. A first-generation college graduate and alumna of Arizona State University, she holds degrees in English, Religious Studies, Gender Studies, and Library Science. Before joining GCC, Corie served as project coordinator for Open Stacks at the ASU Library, leading collections initiatives that highlighted leisure reading, creativity, and community collaboration. With experience spanning librarianship, student affairs, curriculum development, and events management, she is especially passionate about how libraries support the arts, amplify creative voices, and create welcoming spaces for storytelling, learning, and cultural connection.

Natalie Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, MacArthur Fellow, and language activist. At Arizona State University (ASU), she is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry, a Professor in the English MFA program, and the Founding Director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands.

Dana Diehl is an educator and author based in Southern Arizona. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University. Dana has served as editor-in-chief of Hayden’s Ferry Review and The Susquehanna Review, and she is a blog interviewer for The Collagist. She has taught composition, creative writing, and humanities at Arizona State University, Florence Prison, the National University of Singapore, and BASIS Primary. She is also a mentor in the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program for high school students.

Dara Yen Elerath’s debut poetry collection, Dark Braid (BkMk Press, 2020), won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, American Poetry Review, Poetry, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, Plume, AGNI, Boulevard, and High Country News, among other journals. She is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing program and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Michele Feeney is an award-winning writer, lawyer, teacher, wife, and mother of five. She divides her time between Arizona and Michigan, where her family still owns part of a Christmas tree farm homesteaded by her ancestors in 1850. After spending 20 years raising children, working, and writing whenever she could, Michele earned her MFA in fiction and nonfiction from Bennington College in 2022. Her debut novel, Like Family (2024), was inspired by a story passed down from her grandmother and imagines how one small Michigan community weathered the influenza epidemic of 1918. Like Home, the second novel in the Like Family series, follows the Crowley-Reid family into the Great Depression, exploring motherhood, illness, mental health, identity, and the struggle to keep a home—and a sense of belonging—alive.

Dee Lalo Garcia is a queer werco from Laredo, Texas, and will not hesitate to scream “Puro pinche 956” if given the opportunity. He is the nonfiction editor for Infrarrealista Review and currently teaches students how to weaponize their creativity at Austin Community College. He is the author of the forthcoming memoir-in-essays Bien Chingón: Vatos and Other Essays (Plancha Press, 2026). He is still feeling the effects of the 2008 Emo vs. Punks Wars in Latino America, though his classified status as a double spy prevents him from revealing which side he was on.

Joel Hans is the author of the collection The Bedtime Emptying of Our World, winner of the 2025 Moon City Short Fiction Award. His fiction has appeared in Story, Fairy Tale Review, West Branch, The Journal, Booth, and other publications, and has been anthologized in Best Small Fictions.

Sabrina Hicks lives in Arizona with her family. Her story collection Coyote Girl was published by Cowboy Jamboree Press in 2026. Her work has appeared in River Teeth, Exposition Review, Maudlin House, Stanchion, Cleaver, Flash Frog, JMWW, Brevity, Fractured, Cowboy Jamboree, Reckon Review, Cheap Pop, Split Lip, Milk Candy Review, Five South Journal, Lost Balloon, Pithead Chapel, Pidgeonholes, Barren Magazine, and other publications. Her work has been anthologized in Stone Gatherings, Too, Vol. 1, Issue 3, and has been recognized in the Wigleaf Top 50 (2020 and 2021) and longlisted in 2022 and 2024. She has also been included in Best Microfiction 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2021, received an honorable mention in Best Microfiction 2019, and earned four Pushcart Prize nominations, nine Best Small Fictions nominations, five Best Microfiction nominations, and three Best of the Net nominations.

Jacqui Higgins-Dailey (she/her) is residential faculty at Glendale Community College in Arizona, adjunct faculty at the University of Kentucky, and a nonfiction writing candidate in the MFA program at Louisiana State University New Orleans. Her work has appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine, Midway Journal, Harpur Palate, NPR, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, and The Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from California State University, Chico, and a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of North Texas. Reach her at: [email protected].

Mary L. Holden, a native Arizonan, published a chapbook in 2012 dedicated to the centennial celebration of Arizona’s founding. Her career as an editor began in the magazine industry, and she has worked as a freelance editor and writer since 2009. Her passion is helping writers achieve personal and professional success in publishing their manuscripts.

Liz Kay holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was the recipient of both an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wendy Fort Foundation Prize for exemplary work in poetry. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, Nimrod, Willow Springs, The New York Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Redactions, and Sugar House Review. She is the author of Something to Help Me Sleep {dancing girl press}, The Witch Tells The Story And Makes It True (Quarter Press), Monsters: A Love Story (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and Fallout: a Novel (forthcoming from Red Hen Press). Liz lives in Omaha, NE with her husband and 3 sons.

Janna Lopez, MFA is an award-winning poet, author, and teacher. She is inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Creighton University School of Medicine.

Kathleen Malone has worked as a publicist and event producer since 2004.

Angelina Mann (she/her) is a Cherokee poet and novelist from Arizona. She holds BAs in Creative Writing (Fiction) and Spanish Literature & Culture from Arizona State University and is currently a Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Scholar and O’Connor Honors Fellow at ASU’s College of Law. Her poetry explores intangible life experiences through experimental structures and natural, tactile, and bodily imagery. Her fiction strives to construct safe houses inhabited by fictional companions through whom readers can learn to love in others what they may not yet love in themselves. Angelina’s work appears in Peregrinos y sus letras and on the Devil’s Inkwell website.

Amber McCrary is a Diné poet and zinester. She is Red House Clan, born for Mexican people. Originally from Shonto, Arizona, and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona, she earned her BA in Political Science with a minor in American Indian Studies from Arizona State University. She received her MFA in Creative Writing, with an emphasis in poetry, from Mills College. McCrary is also the owner and founder of Abalone Mountain Press, a press dedicated to publishing Indigenous voices.She serves on the boards of the Northern Arizona Book Festival and Words of the People. She was named Arizona Humanities’ 2022 Rising Star of the Year and is a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation LIFT awardee.Her debut poetry collection, Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert, is available now from the University of Arizona Press.

Daniel Pereyra is a Brooklyn-born, Tempe-based writer of poetry and fiction. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks and the full-length collection How I Learned to Learn New Things (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Daniel received an MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University and teaches poetry workshops through Arizona State University and Phoenix Center for the Arts. When he is not writing, he enjoys watching reality television with his wife and listening to his son talk about his day. 

Bianca Alyssa Pérez is a poet and educator born and raised in South Texas. Her debut poetry collection, snake breath, won Hub City Press’ 2026 Deep Line Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in Spring 2027. Her work has appeared in Porter House Review, Infrarrealista Review, New York Quarterly, Poetry Daily, Praisesong for the People Anthology (edited by Amanda Johnston), The Texas Observer, The Baltimore Review, The Bangalore Review, and is forthcoming in an anthology from the University of Nevada Press. She is also the co-host of the horror podcast Basement Girls with writer Steph Grossman. Find more chisme at biancaalyssaperez.com.

jj peña (he/they) is a queer, burrito-blooded writer. jj was a winner of the 92NY Discovery Contest (2023) and has won several creative nonfiction flash and hybrid contests. Their work appears in the Best Microfiction 2020 anthology and Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions (2020). jj’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Washington Square Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.

Nicole Piemonte, PhD isAssociate Dean of Faculty Leadership and Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Creighton University School of Medicine.

Timothy Provenzano is a writer, musician, and librarian from Tempe, Arizona. He earned his MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2025. His work has appeared in Pink Disco Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, The Cold Magazine, and elsewhere. He is currently at work on a novel about Phoenix underground culture in the 1990s. 

Randi Rubenzik, MD is a dermatologist, and Affiliate Assistant Professor at Creighton School of Medicine, Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Arizona - College of Medicine.

Sharon Suzuki-Martinez won the Washington Prize for her latest book, The Loneliest Whale Blues (The Word Works), and the MVP Prize for her first book, The Way of All Flux (New Rivers Press). Her micro-chapbook is A Glimpse of Birds over O’odham Land (Rinky Dink Press). She lives in Tempe, Arizona, on the homeland of the Akimel O’odham. Learn more at SharonSuzukiMartinez.com.

Natalia Treviño, born in Mexico, is the author of the novel The Road Back (Arte Público Press, 2026) and the poetry collections When You Were Human (FlowerSong Press, 2026), VirginX (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Lavando La Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014). Her honors include the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Menada Literary Award from Macedonia, and the Ambroggio Prize for co-translation from the Academy of American Poets. She is a Professor of English in San Antonio, Texas.

Edie Tsong is a writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her writing has appeared in El Palacio and THE Magazine and was featured in SITE Santa Fe’s Billboard Project and the “Poetic Justice” exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Tsong is a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow and the recipient of the SITE Santa Fe SPREAD 2.0 grant. She lives in Northern New Mexico and is currently working on a memoir in essays. 

Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), received the Texas Institute of Letters’ John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Poetry.

Evan Morgan Williams is the recipient of a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He is the author of four collections of stories: Thorn (BkMk Press, 2014), Canyons (2018), Stories of the New West (Main Street Rag, 2021), and The Divide (Cornerstone Press, 2026). He has published over 75 stories in journals including Kenyon Review, Witness, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Zyzzyva. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana (1991). A member of the Deaf/HOH community, he is retired after 29 years of teaching in a public school. 

Tait Wilson (he/him) is a poet whose main focus is on experiences throughout his life.  He received his associate’s degree in general studies at Yavapai College in Prescott and then his Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He has lived in Arizona his entire life and his ties to his cultural background (Tohono O’odham & Black) have colored his writings around themes related to Indigenous issues, the landscape, racism, & queer complexities. His writing style is inspired by narrative structures as well as freeform craft. He has an affinity towards creating works that border the area of mysticism and political manifestations. He has worked with non-profit organizations such as Who We Are as well as Ripple to Wave. He likes feeding wild birds and being close to water when the opportunity presents itself. He currently resides in Apache Junction, Arizona and plans to pursue his Master’s. 

Michael L. Zirulnik, PhD, MCIS. Dr. Zirulnik, is Assistant Vice President of University Relations for Creighton University and Associate Professor in the School of Medicine.

Saúl Hernández is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. His debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a Writers’ League of Texas Discovery Award winner, and was longlisted for a PEN Open Book Award.

Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Associate Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, he has published widely in venues of public scholarship and poetry, including three chapbooks and the full-length poetry collection What’s Left Is Tender (Harbor Editions, 2025). He can be reached at [email protected].

Naomi Ortiz (they/them) is a Reclaiming the US/Mexico Border Narrative Awardee and a United States Artist Disability Futures Fellow. They are a Disabled Mestize poet, visual artist, and author of the poetry and essay collection Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice (2023), the nonfiction book Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice (2018), and co-editor of the anthology Every Place on the Map is Disabled: Poems and Essays (2026). Through their interdisciplinary work, Ortiz invites people to imagine how self-care, disability justice, climate action, and other relational practices can create a collective future. Learn more at www.NaomiOrtiz.com or contact them at [email protected].

Cecilia Savala (she/her) is a Latinx poet, teacher, and mom. She is a morning person, a cat person, a writing teacher at Arizona State University, and the Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence. Her work has appeared in Acentos Review, The Boiler, and Poetry South, among others. She can be reached at [email protected].