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Oluyemisi Bolonduro
Email Address: obolonduro@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2023Biography:
Oluyemisi Ayoyinka Bolonduro (she/they) is a Christian, Nigerian American writer with a background in autofiction and blogging. Her writing often explores friendship trios and reimagined truths. In their free time, Oluyemisi collects anime trinkets, library cards, and Stardew Valley geodes.
https://oluyemisibolonduro.wordpress.com/
Writing/Research Interests:
African self-consciousness theory, Pentecostal Christianity, (a)sexuality
Academic Background:
- B.A. in Africana Studies with a minor in English, Pomona College, 2023
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Kimaya Kulkarni
Email Address: kikulkarni@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2023 -
Fiona Martinez
Email Address: fimartinez@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2024Biography:
Fiona Martinez is a poet and community organizer from Boise, Idaho. Most at home in nature, she writes while walking, ocean wading, watching the branches for birds and the cracks in the sidewalk for the unexpected.
Writing/Research Interests:
Fiona understands writing as a liberatory practice that requires free verse and hybrid forms including bilingual writing and visual poetry/autobiography. Her work centers nature, water, home (as place and embodiment), and the persistent entanglement of violence and tenderness.
Publications:
- “Though my hair is not black”, Jeopardy Magazine. LINK
- “Palm”, Cedar. LINK
- “Algo De Nuestras Raíces Empezó Aquí”, Jeopardy Magazine. LINK
Academic Background:
- B.A. in English - Creative Writing Emphasis with minors in Education & Social Justice and Spanish, Western Washington University, 2024
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Sarah Mullen
Email Address: srmullen@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2024Biography:
Sarah Mullen is a nonfiction writer & educator who is obsessed with the thin line that separates fact from fiction. Apart from writing, you'll find her perfecting her garden companion planting strategy, binge watching reality and sci-fi tv, or visiting local libraries with her two children.
Writing/Research Interests:
Personal and Lyric Essay, Memoir, explorations of nature and identity, Deconstruction, Addiction, Spirituality, Matrescence, and Re-Storying. Entanglements, Identity Construction, Post Structural and Materialist Feminism, and Auto-ethnography.
Publications:
- "Notes on Homemaking" in Roxane Gay & The Audacity's Emerging Writers Series - (May 2025). LINK
- "Anything But” in Mulberry Literary- Issue VII - (Nov 2023). LINK
- “Pendant” in Wordrunner eChapbooks- 2022 Anthology – (Apr 2022). LINK
- “Cigarettes & Silence” in Feels Blind Literary- Issue 7 – (Mar 2022). LINK
- “We Made Them: Degendered Play and Shifting Subjectivities in ABC’s Bluey” in The Journal of Children in Popular Culture- Issue 13- vol. 1 – (Nov 2022). LINK
Academic Background:
- B.A. in English with a minor in Writing, Portland State University
- M.A. in Literature & Writing, California State University, San Marcos
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Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
Email Address: rnovaesdeoliveira@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2023Biography:
Ricardo "Ricky" Novaes de Oliveira (he/him) is a literary artist, educator, and poet.
https://oliveirapoetry.substack.com/
Writing/Research Interests:
Writer of contemporary poetry, avant-garde and experimental prose, cross-genre writing, and hybridity and mixed identities. Researcher of indigeniety and counter-hegemonic cultural formations.
Publications:
- Poems. UChicago Arts Magazine, Winter 2019. LINK
- Poems. Rigorous Journal, 2021. LINK
- "Dirty Laundry." Postscript Magazine, 2022. LINK
Academic Background:
- B.A. in Creative Writing with Honors, University of Chicago
- B.A. in Political Science, University of Chicago
- M.A. in Urban Education with a focus in Literacy, Loyola Marymount University
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Emma Rault
Email Address: erault@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2025 -
Madison Rosandich
Email Address: mrosandich@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2025 -
Bailey Sneed
Email Address: bsneed@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2023 -
Fatima Abby Tall
Email Address: ftall@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2025Biography:
fatima abby tall (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist with history in southern idaho and dakar, senegal.
https://www.fatimaabbytall.com/
Writing/Research Interests:
(un)dead, hauntings/hauntology, water, pre-colonial religious systems, multiplicity, spiritual alterity
Publications:
- "Goldfish Musings", Bottlecap Press LINK
Highlights:
- Artist-in-Residence, Centrum Self-Directed Residencies in Port Townsend, WA (2023)
- Finalist for the Miracle Monocle Award for Young Black Writers, A Cow With No Name (2023)
Academic Background:
- B.A. in English/Creative Writing and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies with a minor in Theater, University of Iowa, 2020
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Chloe Watlington
Email Address: cwatlington@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2025 -
Georgia Wright
Email Address: gewright@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2024Biography:
Georgia Wright (they/she) is a multidisciplinary writer and creative shapeshifter with roots in coastal Rhode Island. Their speculative, kaleidoscopic work explores climate, metamorphosis, and the inexplicable. Georgia is an alum of the 2025 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer's Workshop.
https://www.wrightgeorgia.com/
Writing/Research Interests:
freaks and queers, experimental ecopoetics, disability and neurodivergence, the horizon of abolition, protest & performance art, dreamscapes, hybridity, island-dwellers, utopia & its discontents, becoming ungovernable
Academic Background:
- B.A. in Literary Arts with Honors, Brown University, 2017
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Klytie Xu
Email Address: klx001@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2024Biography:
Klytie Xu is a writer and artist from California.
Writing/Research Interests:
Her writing and research interests include poetry, hybrid writing, visual literature, Asian American studies, (mis-,dis-) translation, artist’s books, and public & personal archives.
Academic Background:
- B.A. in Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing, UC Santa Cruz, 2021
- B.A. in Art, UC Santa Cruz, 2021
Graduate Students - MFA
Active MFA students in the Department of Literature.