MFA Presents and Community Writers 2025

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.

Jack Bylund (he/him) is a student, teacher, and writer living in New Mexico. He is teaching English while pursuing and MFA. He loves Panda Express, bad movies, and writing stories about the end of the world. His writing is punished in Coffin Bell, Grim and Gilded, and Sink Hollow Literary Magazines, among others."

Chris Du is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University (ASU) and a translator of Sylvia Plath. Her current poetry practice often explores the intersections of nature, digital identity, and memory, examining how both physical and virtual environments shape emotional landscapes and self-perception.

Katie Grierson (she/her) is often a poet. She has been recognized as a Best of the Net Nominee, by YoungArts as a finalist in novel-writing, twice as the Academy of American Poets Jean Burden Prize Winner, has had her work supported by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and is diligently working on her MFA at Arizona State University. She hopes to one day become a beam of light. 

KaNeshia Hooks is an MFA creative writing graduate student at Northern Arizona University. She is the self-published author of eight works currently available on Amazon.com. She is also the public relations manager for Thin Air Literary Magazine, where she works to build the Thin Air lit brand.

Isabel C.  Lanzetta (she/her) is a poet whose work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Oakland Arts Review, New Reader Magazine, Leviathan, Curios Magazine, and Convergence: Young Authors of Arizona, among others. Her poetry has been supported by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Isabel is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at Arizona State University. When she’s not writing, she enjoys long walks with her dog—and favorite dancing queen—ABBA.

Lan Lesmeister is an MFA student at Arizona State University (ASU) and Poetry Editor of Hayden's Ferry Review

Maura O’Dea (she/her) is a poet, translator, and fiber artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. You can find her work on Strange Horizons, Scrawl Place, and elsewhere. Free Palestine.

Madelyn Parker (They/She) is a genderqueer MFA candidate at New Mexico State University. Their few print and online publications include Pedestal Magazine, Barren Magazine, Small Packages Press, and most recently she received the 2025 The Academy of American Poets' Ruth Scott Poetry Award."

Myles Varga is an MFA candidate for fiction at New Mexico State University, where he teaches and serves as the Fiction Editor for Puerto Del Sol. He has won first place for the 2024 Kevin Mcilvoy Creative Writing Endowed Fellowship. His work has appeared in Poets for Science and Folded Treasures, a project from Small Packages Press."

Max Wheeler is a trans writer and teacher from Oakland, CA. His work is forthcoming in Gulf Coast and can be found in 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.

Zêdan Xelef is a poet, translator, organizer, and archivist. They grew up in the Yazidi community of Shingal Mountains where they herded four goats with three other cousins. They are the co-creator of Tew Tew, an oral history and oral traditions archive with a mission to conserve the endangered Yazidi oral traditions in response to the Yazidi genocide. They’re the writer of A Barcode Scanner (Kashkul Books 2021/Gato Negro Ediciones 2022) and co-editor and co-translator of Something Missing from This World: Contemporary Yazidi Poetry (Deep Vellum, August 2024).

Alfredo Aguilar is the author of the poetry collection On This Side of the Desert (Kent State University Press 2020) selected by Natalie Diaz for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. He received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and has been awarded support from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and The de Groot Foundation. His work has appeared in The Yale Review, Waxwing, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Born and raised in North County San Diego, he currently resides in Central Texas.

Sasha Anaya (she/her) is a marketing writer for Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation as well as a faculty associate for the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Sasha holds a Doctorate of Education from ASU’s Leadership and Innovation program, and her scholarly interests focus on arts-based engagement strategies and the intrinsic value of creative expression. An avid art journaler and mixed-media artist, Sasha gravitates toward ekphrastic experimentation in writing. She believes that all people, regardless of whether they self-identify as creatives, benefit from habitual creative practices and a commitment to play and curiosity.

Stephanie Austin is the author of Something I Might Say, a chapbook published with WTAW Press. Her short stories and essays have been published in more than 25 literary journals including The Sun, American Short Fiction, and the New England Review. Her debut novel, Burn, will be published in 2026 with Cowboy Jamboree. She teaches writing and lives in Phoenix, AZ with her husband, daughter, and high-energy dog.

Alyssa Begay, a member of the Navajo Nation, received her MFA in the Creative Writing Program at Northern Arizona University. She has also earned her BA degree from Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. Alyssa’s writing is inspired by her family’s rich Navajo culture and blends together Navajo storytelling, lyric/braided essays, research, and poetry. 

Sylvia Chan is a disabled poet and essayist, educator, and activist and author of We Remain Traditional (Center for Literary Publishing, 2018). 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, and writers who have been impacted by the criminal justice system.

Megan Kirchhoff has 15 years of experience in corporate learning and development. She brings a strong foundation in adult learning theory, leadership facilitation, and intentional curriculum design. After leaving the corporate world to pursue fiction writing, she immersed herself in Phoenix’s literary community—attending conferences, critique groups, and building inclusive spaces for creative growth. 

Marieke Davis is a legally blind, professional visual artist and author. While still an undergraduate at Arizona State University, she created the Prologue/Chapter One of her graphic series, Ember Black, in print and audio, as well as a semi-autobiographical comic strip, Life is Blurry. The first installment of Ember won the Audience Choice Award at the Herberger Institute IDEA Showcase, and the creation of Chapter Two in dual formats was awarded an Arizona Commission on the Arts grant. Excerpts of Life is Blurry also won her a VSA Emerging Young Artist Award from the Kennedy Center. Marieke created her first children's book, Lily, the Blind Unicorn for her MFA thesis project at the Columbus College of Art & Design and as an audio adaptation at ASU, with the hope to encourage children with disabilities to reach their maximum potential.

Michele Feeney is an MFA graduate (Bennington 2022), faculty at ASU Law School, and a published author.

Lee Anne Gallaway-Mitchell is a caregiver and writer living in Tucson, Arizona. Her essays have won The Florida Review Editor’s Award, the Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and the Boulevard Magazine Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona and a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Lee Anne is at work on a memoir titled Campfollower, which explores mental illness and caregiving stress in her military family.

Saúl Hernández is a queer writer who was raised by former undocumented parents. Saúl is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. His debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is out now. His work is featured in American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Literary Hub, Columbia Journal, Pleiades, Split This Rock & elsewhere. He's a Macondista, a 2021 Tin House Alum, & a 2024 Lambda Literary Fellow.

Sabrina Hicks lives in Arizona with her family. She has work in Cowboy Jamboree, Reckon Review, River Teeth, Exposition Review, Stanchion, Cleaver, Flash Frog, Brevity, Fractured, Split Lip, Milk Candy Review, Five South Journal, Pithead Chapel, Barren Magazine, and many other fine publications. She was the Grand Prize Winner of the 85th Writer’s Digest Competition, first prize winner of Five South Journal‘s 2022 Spring Flash Fiction Contest, and the first place winner of Cleaver Magazine‘s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest. Her work has earned two spots on Wigleaf's Top 50, two Best Micro Fiction (2023), one Best Small Fictions (2021), one Honorable Mention for Best Microfiction (2019), as well as over twenty nominations for Pushcart and "Best of" anthologies.

Mary L. Holden is a professional freelance editor.

Kelly Houle is an Arizona-based poet, teacher, and visual artist. Her poems have been published in CALYX, Crab Orchard Review, Kenyon Review, Radar Poetry, Sequestrum, and others. She was named a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, the Fischer Prize, the Arts and Letters ‘Unclassifiable’ contest, and winner of a Vivian Shipley Award and grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and holds a diploma in botanical art from the Society of Botanical Artists. Kelly is a nature journaling ambassador for the Wild Wonder Foundation and leads an online nature sketchbook club for homeschooled high school students.

Tereza Kane discovered her passion for storytelling back in high school, where she first began experimenting with creative writing. Over the years, she built a loyal and supportive readership online, which gave her the courage to take the leap and write her own book. As an author, Tereza primarily focuses on LGBTQ+ romance, weaving heartfelt stories that often blend contemporary themes with touches of fantasy, sci-fi, and paranormal intrigue. Her work is a celebration of love, identity, and the boundless possibilities of imagination.

Cindy Kibbe. as a kid, (writing as C.K. DONNELLY) wrote stories under the covers with a flashlight The award-winning journalist and self-described “unsuccessful quitter” released her first novel, Trine Rising, The Kinderra Saga: Book I in 2020. Since then, she has published two sequels, Trine Fallacy: Book 2 and Trine Revelation: Book 3, earning 18 literary awards for the fantasy series. Kibbe, a sought-after workshop instructor and moderator, resides in Arizona with her oh-so-patient husband and her little black dog (who is equally patient). She no longer writes under the covers by flashlight. Usually.

Lawrence Lenhart is the author of the essay collections The Well-Stocked and Gilded Cage (Outpost19, 2016), Backvalley Ferrets: A Rewilding of the Colorado Plateau (University of Georgia: Crux, 2023), and Dry Safe & Together. Lenhart is co-librettist and composer of the cowpunk fantasia Pop Goes the Ferret!, a rock opera based on his essay collection. With Will Cordeiro, he co-wrote Experimental Writing: A Writer's Guide & Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2024). His prose appears in journals like Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Conjunctions, High Country News, and Orion. He is reviews editor of DIAGRAM and founding editor of Carbon Copy. His essays have been listed as notable in the Best American Essays series (2015, 2016, and 2018).

Lydia Paar is a University of Arizona writing instructor and writer whose work intersects working-class, military, and gun violence. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes, noted in Best American Essays, and published in the Huffington Post, North American Review, and more. Her memoir-in-essays, The Exit is the Entrance: Essays on Escape, was published by UGA Press in September 2024, and was featured in the 2024 Poets & Writers New Nonfiction Roundup.

Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick teaches creative nonfiction at Northern Arizona University where she is pursuing an MFA. She is also a journalist focused on public health, homelessness, and fringe cultures. Her work can be found in USA Today, The Register-Guard, Seattle Times, The Oregonian, The Indianapolis Star, Oregon Public Broadcasting, The Colorado Springs Gazette, Flagstaff Cycle-Zine! and others.

Shella Parcarey is a Filipino writer working on her first novel based on her childhood growing up in the Philippines under the Marcos dictatorship. Her poetry has been published in Black Fox Literary and her creative nonfiction in ANMLY. Shella is a former journalist published in The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, and the Arizona Daily Star. She is an Anaphora Arts Fellow, and her work has received support from Tin House Summer Workshop, VONA, and StoryBoard workshop at StoryStudio Chicago. Shella is a nonfiction editor for The Plentitudes and a reader for The Rumpus. She received her MFA from Pacific University, where she was awarded the Kwame Dawes Mapmakers Scholarship. She graduated from Yale University, where she studied political science.

jj peña (pronouns he/they) is the winner of 92NY Discovery Poetry Contest (2023), Fractured Literature's Micro Contest (2021), Tinderbox Journal Editor's Prize (2021), Santa Clara Review's Flash Contest (2021), Mythic Picnic's Post Card Prize (2020), CutBank's Big Sky/Small Prose Contest (2019), & Blue Earth Review's Flash Non-fiction Contest (2019). jj is a 2021 Periplus Fellow, a 2022 Woody & Gayle Hunt Fellow for Aspen Summer Words, & a 2023 Editorial Fellow for Shenandoah Literary. jj holds a BA in both English and Anthropology, & an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso.  jj's work has been published widely & anthologized in places like Best Short Fictions of 2022, Best Micro-Fictions of 2020, & Wigleaf Top 50 Short-Shorts. jj currently reads for Splitlip Magazine.

Justin St. Germain is the author of two books, the internationally acclaimed memoir Son of a Gun and a book-length essay about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. He grew up in Tombstone, Arizona, has a BA and MFA from the University of Arizona, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He teaches at Oregon State.

Harlowe Savage is a queer author dedicated to creating stories that depict queer romances with the same amount of spice and passion that readers get from their straight counterparts. She firmly believes that the gap between the amount of LGBTQIA+ erotica and heterosexual erotica in the mainstream is far too large and intends to rectify this through normalizing queer romance novels and increasing accessibility of the genre.

Winslow Schmelling is a writer from the Sonoran Desert where she teaches Creative Writing at Arizona State University and the surrounding communities. She is a content marketer and ghostwriter for professionals with goals to write about and publish unique, technical expertise. Her writing and educational outreach has been supported by the City of Phoenix, the City of Tempe, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Her creative work explores deserts, magic, cycles of landscape and family, and how to coax the scent of rain from a creosote bush. She is at work on a novel about sisters and survival.

Laura Villareal, [email protected], Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving (University of Wisconsin Press 2022), was awarded 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. ​She earned an MFA at Rutgers University—Newark and has been the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, VONA, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at University of Texas-Austin. She is currently an associate with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where she co-edits and writes for Letras Latinas Blog 2, in addition to working on other related projects. She is also a contributing editor at West Branch Magazine. Alongside Diannely Antigua, she is co-editing a new anthology of Latinx poetry titled We Come from Everything: Poetry for the 21st Century forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027.

Nicole Walker is the author of How to Plant a Billion Trees and Writing the Hard Stuff,Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh and Navigating Disaster, The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, Sustainability: A Love Story, Where the Tiny Things Are, Egg, Micrograms, and Quench Your Thirst with Salt. She edited for Bloomsbury the essay collections Science of Story with Sean Prentiss and with Margot Singer, Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction. She edits the Crux series at University of Georgia Press and nonfiction at Diagram and teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University.