Volcanistas 2023

Narrativa
con Alberto Chimal

Versión corta:

Adalberto Ortiz Ávalos es originario y residente de la Ciudad de México, tiene 33 años de edad y ha escrito novelas románticas, cuentos infantiles, poemas y análisis financieros entre los géneros que destacan de sus obras.

Versión amplia

Semblanza de Adalberto Ortiz Ávalos

Adalberto Ortiz Ávalos (Adal), nació en la Ciudad de México en 1989, es un empresario que se define como activista por los derechos y la democratización financiera e impulsor del desarrollo económico con una visión social y sustentable.

Escribe novela, cuento, poesía y artículos de opinión en varios medios nacionales sobre finanzas, bienestar e inclusión financiera. De los artículos de opinión destacan sus columnas en El Financiero, donde cotidianamente suele ser invitado a expresarse y opinar. En cuanto a las obras editoriales destacan que Adal lanzó a inicios del 2021 su primera novela llamada “Las Luciérnagas”, enmarcada en un contexto de época histórica nacional y con una alta trama sentimental, es distribuida por la editorial Selector. Para 2022 publicó el libro “La inclusión financiera en México”, en el que analiza de forma multidimensional la materia y expone la importancia de que tanto el gobierno como las empresas continúen promoviendo y ampliando la mencionada inclusión. Asimismo, en el mismo año puso a circulación su primer cuento infantil, “El mejor día”, cuyo texto está acompañado de una obra de arte en cuanto a ilustración, y que de forma novedosa el lector encuentra en la misma pieza la lectura en inglés norteamericano además de en castellano – español.

Funge como presidente de la Comisión de Inclusión Financiera de la COPARMEX CDMX, desde donde trabaja por los derechos financieros de los empresarios nacionales y de los emprendedores.

Cuenta con estudios en Administración de Empresas por el ITESM, así como en Ciencia Política por la máxima casa de estudios, la UNAM.

Poetry Manuscript Seminar
With Keetje Kuipers

Alexandra Risley Schroeder is a poet who writes about nature as inspiration, metaphor and cautionary tale. She lives in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts where her professional, artistic and volunteer activities have long twined around responding to climate change. Her training in political science, qualitative research and interfaith Earth ministry combine to ground her years of creative, regulatory and policy writing in a sense of wonder and possibility for the planet. Knowing poetry connects us viscerally to the world, her current work links individual poems to particular climate solutions researched by Project Drawdown. A graduate of Smith College, the University of Massachusetts and Wisdom University, she is outside, moving as much as possible: biking, hiking, swimming, canoeing, skiing, usually with dogs in tow.

Fiction
with Sheree Renée Thomas

IMAGINATION UNBOUND FELLOWSHIP

Amanda Kallis is a speculative fiction writer originally from Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Catapult, the Bare Life Review, the Black Warrior Review (2018 prize winner), McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was an artist-in-residence at the Edward Albee Foundation. Her novel Skinframe, the story of two sisters from a family of inventors, asks how far people are willing to go to avoid grief . A film and digital photographer, her images weave into several of her essays. Lately you can spot her and her cat on night walks around the city of Boston.

Narrativa con Alberto Chimal

Aurora Piñeiro vive en la Ciudad de México. Es Doctora en Letras Inglesas por la UNAM y profesora de tiempo completo del Departamento de Letras Inglesas de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UNAM). Es autora de la colección de cuentos cortos En el fuego y la miel (2004). En el campo de la investigación, ha publicado, entre otros títulos, El gótico y su legado en el terror. Una introducción a la estética de la oscuridad (UNAM, 2017), y fue editora del volumen Rewriting Traditions. Contemporary Irish Fiction (UNAM, 2021). Actualmente escribe una nueva colección de cuentos cortos, que será el proyecto con el que trabaje en la residencia de UTV.

Aurora Piñeiro lives in Mexico City. She read a PhD in English at UNAM, where she teaches in the English Department of the School of Philosophy and Literature. She is the author of a collection of flash-fiction with the title En el fuego y la miel (2004). As a researcher, she has published El gótico y su legado en el terror. Una introducción a la estética de la oscuridad (UNAM, 2017), and was the editor of Rewriting Traditions. Contemporary Irish Fiction (UNAM, 2021). At present, she is writing a new collection of short stories: this is the project she will work on during her stay at UTV.

Manuscript Seminar
with Reyna Grande

I spent 40 years of my life as a community college educator and advocate, almost half of those as the president of two small, rural colleges. When I retired to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, a place of extraordinary natural beauty and world class music, theater and museums, I imagined myself enjoying those resources, volunteering with local non-profits that help women and girls, coaching emerging leaders and writing a blog that started out as leadership lessons and evolved into “just because.” No one is more surprised than I am to find myself immersed in writing an historical novel loosely based on my grandmother, which I will be working on at UTV. I think that telling her story is really a way to tell my own.

www.barbaraviniar.com

Fiction
with Sheree Renée Thomas

Benjamin Parzybok is the author of the novels Couch (two-time Indie-Next pick) and Sherwood Nation (chosen for the Silicon Valley Reads program), as well as numerous short stories which can be found in venues such as Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, West Branch, and The Bellevue Literary Review.  Among other projects, he founded Gumball Poetry, a literary journal published in gumball capsule machines, co-ran Project Hamad, an effort to free a Guantanamo inmate (Adel Hamad is now free), and co-runs Black Magic Insurance Agency, a one-night city-wide alternative reality game. He lives in Portland, Oregon and can be found at https://levinofearth.com and @sparkwatson (in the ruins of Twitter) and @[email protected] (in the newly founded metropolis where hope springs eternal). His website is a game in which you, if you wish, may fight the author in battle. No hard feelings though. Here is a peace offering.

Writing of Witness
with Elizabeth Rosner

Carrie Lee M.P.A. is an Author and Poet in Indianapolis, IN. Carrie Lee proudly describes herself as a Coffee Drinking, Book Reading, Tattoo Loving, Introverted Aquarian from a small town in the Midwest USA.  Carrie has been writing her whole life but just recently began sharing her work with others. Carrie has had several poems published in various anthologies and more recently published her first full length poetry book, Ascension which can be found on Amazon. In her free time, Carrie works as a Teaching Artist with Asante Art Institute of Indianapolis, IN where she shares her love for literature and writing with young girls ages 8-18.

Carries’ hobbies include reading a wide variety of genres especially Poetry, Manga, and Fantasy Novels written by BIPOC authors. Carrie enjoys participating in writing groups and is a long-time member of The Black Womxn Writing Club where she has been honored to write with women from all over the world. When Carrie is not reading or writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter and their four dogs.

Carrie is currently working on several projects and will also be part of the upcoming Anthology, Yonitry, which is due to be released in early 2023.

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

GRACE PALEY FELLOWSHIP

Originally from Australia, Christine Evans writes plays, novels and opera libretti. Her novel, Nadia, is forthcoming from University of Iowa Press (2023). The title characters of River & Maude, the novel she will bring to Under the Volcano, live under a broken bridge in a drowned world, sheltered from the Before. When runaway scientist Maude disappears, teenaged River forms a dangerous alliance with a bio-drone crow to help find and rescue her.

Christine’s other fiction includes novel-in-verse Cloudless (UWAP, Australia, 2015) and the novel Nadia, forthcoming from University of Iowa Press (2023). Other current projects include the libretto for Three Marys, a contemporary chamber opera composed by Andrée Greenwell; and Galilee, a play about sharks, reefs and climate change (Azuka Theater, premiere 2023.) A multiple MacDowell and VCCA fellow, she lives in Washington, DC, where she serves as Professor of Performing Arts at of Georgetown University.

University’s Department of Performing Arts.

Writing of Witness
with Elizabeth Rosner

Cora Currier is an investigative journalist and editor who has worked at The Intercept, ProPublica, and The New Yorker. She has also written for The New Republic, The Nation, Bookforum, and many other publications, and is an editor of the feminist magazine Lux. Her first love is poetry, but right now she is writing a novel about the war on terror. She lives and bikes (it can be done!) in Los Angeles. 

Fiction

Memphis, Tennessee

Danian Darrell Jerry, writer, teacher, and musician, holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis. He is a 2020 VONA Fellow and a Fiction Editor of Obsidian. Danian founded Neighborhood Heroes, a youth arts program that employs comic books and literary arts. Currently, he revises his first novel, Boy with the Golden Arm. His work appears or is forthcoming in Fireside Fiction, Cracking the Wire During Black Lives Matter, Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, Black Panther Tales of Wakanda, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Illmatic Consequences: The Clapback to Opponents of Critical Race Theory, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Fiction. Danian resides in Memphis, Tennessee, home of the blues and American soul music.

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

Deborah Stein is an artist and writer living between New York City and a small mountain town in Northern New Mexico. She creates works on paper and writes lyric essays, literary non-fiction and prose and paints and draws in tandem with her writing. She writes into questions about nature, death, the complex systems of histories and truth and the landscape of place, self and belonging. Her stories are concerned with the refugees of her German-Jewish maternal line and her father’s upbringing in the tenements and streets of the Lower East Side in the 1920’s and 30’s. In Tepoztlán she will be exploring the space between picture-making and written forms to see what emerges, piecing together a series of stories of imagined ancestors and current hauntings. She’s presently obsessed with the cricket in Collidi’s Pinocchio and a family of squirrels on her fire escape.

Poesía en español
con Elisa Díaz Castelo y Ben Clark

Vivo en el Estado de México. Soy licenciada en Ciencias de la Comunicación por la UNAM con una tesis sobre el EZLN. He hecho academia, periodismo, marketing y literatura. Actualmente trabajo como freelance, escribiendo poesía y narraciones breves, además de ser consultora y redactora SEO. He publicado con la editorial Ipstori y he presentado mi trabajo literario en espacios como Capital 21 y la Feria Internacional del Libro Zócalo. Me fascina ir a festivales de música. Me encanta el metal, la cumbia, meditar y hacer yoga. Mi misión es vivir de las letras y su difusión cultural.

I live in the State of Mexico. I have a degree in Communication Sciences from UNAM with a thesis about the EZLN (Zapatistas.)I have worked in academia, journalism, marketing and literature. I currently work as a freelance, writing poetry and short stories, as well as being an SEO consultant and writer. I have worked with the Ipstori publishing house and have presented my literary work in places such as Capital 21 and the Feria Internacional del Libro Zócalo. I love going to music festivals. I’m super into metal, cumbia, meditatation and yoga. My mission is to live from words and their cultural dissemination.

Narrativa
con Alberto Chimal

Fernando Hidalgo is a creative director, short story and microfiction writer from Costa Rica. He has a
Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Salamanca, Spain. His short stories have been published in Costa Rican and Latin American anthologies. In 2022, he won first national place in the Brunca Literary Contest organized by the National University of Costa Rica. He is currently working on his first book of short stories: I think my name is Julio. When he’s not writing, he works in advertising and plays Pokemon Go.
Fernando Hidalgo es un director creativo y escritor de cuentos y microficción de Costa Rica. Tiene una Maestría en Escritura Creativa por la Universidad de Salamanca, España. Sus cuentos han sido publicados en antologías costarricenses y latinoamericanas. En 2022 obtuvo el primer lugar nacional en el Certamen Literario Brunca organizado por la Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. Actualmente está trabajando en su primer libro de cuentos: Creo que me llamo Julio. Cuando no está escribiendo, trabaja en publicidad y juega Pokémon Go.

Fiction in Spanish
with Alberto Chimal

VOZ VIVA FELLOWSHIP

Francisco Andrade lives and teaches in Celaya, Mexico. Winner of the 2022 Premio de Literatura León for his story “Después de esta noche nada será igual”, he has stories in the anthologies Cuentos para romper espejos (Ediciones Periféricas, 2019) and Gracias por escuchar (Resonancia Magazine, 2019). He also writes newspaper columns, reviews and news articles. He is drawn to various forms of resistance, from poetry to rock and roll, the counterculture and, above all, the stories we tell ourselves in order to live.

Writing of Witness
with Elizabeth Rosner

Originally from San Diego, California, Bela is a writer and mediocre adrenaline junkie. She received a bachelor’s degree in English writing and rhetoric from Pepperdine University before moving to the mountains of Montana to pursue a Master of Science in environmental studies. She loves to write about the social dynamics of ocean sports, life in a border town, and Mexican family lore. She’s most happy on a surfboard or in a kelp forest.

Fiction
with Sheree Renée Thomas

Janae Phillips (she/her) is a speculative fiction writer from the Sonoran Desert. She loves stories about the throughlines that connect people, places, and times, like her short story “Impressions,” appearing in Elegant Literature, wherein one disillusioned vampire learns the importance of community. Janae’s work often explores the complicated business of living a life; her novella Epilogues and Other Disasters features former world-saving teen heroes trying to pin down their soft epilogues as adults. Janae also practices storytelling through her experience design work, which she has utilized over the last decade as a nonprofit consultant to help community organizers across the globe deepen their impact. No matter what form her stories take, Janae likes to say her work is for magic makers and cycle breakers.   

Fiction
with Alberto Chimal

Nací en Ciudad de México y crecí por fragmentos entre un sitio y otro, cambiando de ciudad constantemente. Digo que siempre estoy en tránsito y que no sé echar raíz. Escribo de lo que me conmueve, de lo que me agita o me toca, de lo que no puedo cambiar o me maravilla. Escribo cuento cada que puedo, algunos están publicados en revistas electrónicas, otros siguen en mi disco duro. Tengo una novela terminada llamada “Los creadores del paraíso”, estoy corrigiendo el primer borrador y estoy escribiendo otra aún sin nombre, espero el instante en que un personaje me lo obsequie a lo largo de la novela. Renuncié a la vida de oficina en corporativos, en la que fui director creativo y de contenidos, para montar un café literario y dedicarme a escribir. Soy de la segunda generación del Diplomado en Escritura Creativa del INBA impartido en el Centro de Lectura Xavier Villaurrutia, Ciudad de México. Le creo más a los poetas que a los políticos, me gusta la música y creo que algunos rockeros son escritores que llegaron antes a los instrumentos musicales que a los libros. Me gusta escuchar a personas que se expresan mediante la palabra. Escribo más de lo que hablo, prefiero escuchar. Es la primera vez que estoy en una residencia para escritores y me intriga lo que voy a encontrar.  

I was born in Mexico City and grew up in bits between one place and another, moving from cities constantly. I say that I´m always in transit and don´t know how to put down roots. I write about what moves me, things that stir me or touch me, about what I cannot change or things that stick to my spirit. I write short stories whenever I can. Some are published in e-magazines, other are kept inside my hard drive. I have a finished a novel titled Los creadores del paraíso, which would be something like The Creators of Paradise.  I am correcting the first draft. I started another novel with no final title yet; I am waiting for a character to give it to me in the process of writing the novel. I left the life of the corporate office, where I had been creative director and content director, to open a literary coffee shop and write. I am part of the second generation of a creative writing program offered by the Institute of Bellas Artes at the Centro de lectura Xavier Villaurrutia in México City. I believe in poets more than politicians, I love music and think that some rockers are writers that stumbled upon instruments before books. I like to listen to people who choose to express themselves through the written word. I write more than I talk. I prefer to listen. This is my first time in a writing residency, I am eager to see what I will find. 

Manuscript Seminar
with Reyna Grande

SANDRA CISNEROS FELLOWSHIP

Jesús Mena, son of undocumented Mexican immigrants who grew up as a migrant farm worker, has had essays and stories published in Latinx Writing Los Angeles: Nonfiction Dispatches from a Decolonial Rebellion, 201 Homenaje a La Ciudad de Los Angeles: Latino Experience in Literature and Art and Solo en San Miguel—anthology of short stories. His nearly finished novel Blood at the Root is set in the south Texas Rio Grande Valley and captures the turmoil unleashed by the arrival of the first railroad in 1904 and the bloody 1915 Plan de San Diego Rebellion, which was brutally crushed. In his words, the novel “explores the human will to survive and to preserve dignity despite the Jim Crow denigration of Mexicans that the new order imposed.” As a journalist, he wrote extensively on the plight of the undocumented, the abusive practices of ICE, and the lack of health care and housing for the poor, with op-ed’s in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune and a commentary on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He is a former director of communications for UC-Berkeley and Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Narrativa con Alberto Chimal

Jorge Luis Almaral Martínez is a fiction writer from Culiacán, Sinaloa. He has published short stories and content over several media, including El deber de los vivos in the anthology Festín de Muertos. A fan of horror and fantasy, with a particular fond of cryptozoology and urban myths, he has also participated in videogame projects in scriptwriting, narrative, and game design. He really likes umbrellas but it rarely rains in his city. The irony is not lost on him.

New York, USA

Fiction with Sabrina Orah Mark

Investigative Journalism
with Alfredo Corchado & Angela Kocherga

Khiabet López Morales was born in Acapulco in 1993. Soy licenciada en Lengua y Literatura de Hispanoamérica por la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC). He sido ponente en congresos de lengua y literatura en la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) y en la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEM). Fui becaria del Festival de Cultura Interfaz Culiacán, 2016, en la categoría de poesía. Poemas de mi autoría aparecen en revistas digitales, como Revista Liberoamérica, Efecto Antabus, ADN Cultura, Círculo de poesía, entre otras. Soy autora de Hace tanto ruido adentro que el silencio se suicida (Editorial Poiesis, 2018). He trabajado como redactora y reportera en los medios periodísticos digitales La Jornada Baja California, Punto Norte y La Jornada Aguascalientes. Actualmente imparto clases de literatura en UNITEC SUR y colaboro a través de entregas en los medios mencionados. En mi trabajo periodístico me he enfocado en causas sociales, pues creo fervientemente que la justicia debería estar al alcance de todas las personas sin importar su color de piel o nivel socioeconómico.

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

Originally from New York, Leigh Rastivo is a fiction writer, essayist, and literary critic haunted since childhood by class disparity. Her speculative novel, The Great Dragonfly Sadness, tells the tale of a socially and politically polarized American family struggling to endure in the aftermath of environmental cataclysm. Some of Leigh’s shorter fiction is published or forthcoming in MicroLit Almanac, L’Esprit Literary Review, and other journals; and her most recent book reviews appear in The Arts Fuse. She holds an MFA from Bennington College, where she was also a post-graduate Fellow. A notoriously introverted extrovert, Leigh splits her time between remote hideouts in rural Virginia and in the mountains of North Carolina.

Seminario de Manuscritos
con Verónica Murguía

LA PÁGINA DORADA

Liliana López León nació en 1984 en Mexicali, Baja California. Es doctora en Medios, Comunicación y Cultura por la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Es maestra en Estudios Socioculturales por el Instituto de Investigaciones Culturales-Museo UABC, y Licenciada en Ciencias de la Comunicación por la UABC. Ha sido profesora en distintos niveles educativos, de bachillerato a posgrado. Ha publicado ensayos académicos, aunque actualmente se encuentra más interesada en la narrativa. Publicó Aurora Mishina en la revista Pez Banana (2020), Una camiseta de los Coquette para Gabi y y Un año sin la Carrà (2022) en Revista Sputnik. También ha publicado algunos poemas en la revista El Septentrión (2022). Su relato Me guían de noche fue seleccionado para el número #13 de la revista Espejo Humeante (octubre, 2022).

Poesía en español
con Elisa Díaz Castelo y Ben Clark

Lucía Pi Cholula (Ciudad de México, 1987) escribe poesía, ensayo, reportaje y relato de viaje. Es autora del libro Este mapa no es de Berlín, en la editorial Los Libros del Perro. Ha publicado diversos textos en Revista de la Universidad Nacional, Revista Común, Nexos, Gatopardo, Periódico de poesía y en libros colectivos. Sus intereses giran en torno a la literatura urbana, la escritura sobre el cuerpo, el feminismo, la crítica literaria y la militancia política. Es licenciada, maestra y doctora en Letras por la UNAM. Es profesora en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa y en el Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Fue becaria del Programa Jóvenes Creadores del Sistema de Apoyos a la Creación y Proyectos Culturales (2021-2022) en la categoría de poesía. Pienso que podría escribir canciones depresivas, no ha de ser tan difícil estar triste.

Writing of Witness
with Elizabeth Rosner

WORDS OF WITNESS FELLOWSHIP

Madeleine Wattenbarger is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City, where she covers politics, human rights and culture for international media outlets. She is currently working on a book about forced disappearance in Mexico. She enjoys dancing cumbia and sitting in the sun with her cat.

Writing of Witness
with Elizabeth Rosner

I was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, where I learned to count in Spanish and to read in English. Although Spanish is my first language—language of home and affection—I feel more comfortable writing essays in English since I did my BA at Yale and MFA at The New School.

I live in Mexico City, teaching English to adults one-on-one online and doing the occasional translation. My original plan was to develop professionally as a museum educator, but health issues complicated that. I’ve written in Spanish about chronic illness for Este País and Vice and have learned to find delight in smaller, deeper, slower living.

My current challenges are creating a writing practice that can match my energy envelope and committing to completing a project! At Under the Volcano I’ll be writing about ballet, history, and chronic illness.

Nací y crecí en Monterrey, donde aprendí a contar en español y a leer en inglés. Aunque el español es mi lengua maternal—lengua de casa y  afectiva—y me siento más segura escribiendo ensayos en inglés ya que hice mis estudios de carrera en Yale y la maestría en The New School en los Estados Unidos.

Actualmente vivo en la Ciudad de México, donde doy clases de inglés y hago algunas traducciones. Mi meta original era trabajar como educadora en museos, pero mis problemas de salud complicaron ese plan. He escrito sobre la enfermedad crónica para Este País y Vice y he aprendido a disfrutar de una vida que es más chica, más profunda, más en calma.

Mis desafíos ahora son crear una práctica de escritura que quepa dentro de mis límites de energía y lograr a acabar un proyecto. En Under the Volcano estaré escribiendo sobre el ballet, la historia y la enfermedad crónica.

Investigative Journalism
with Alfredo Corchado & Angela Kocherga

ROBERT L. BREEN FELLOWSHIP

Marisol Fernanda Chávez is a multimedia journalist based in the border cities of Ciudad Juárez, México and El Paso, Texas. She is a published journalist and photojournalist who has worked with multiple news outlets, including the Dallas Morning News, Al Día Dallas, El Paso Matters, and La Verdad.  Her work ranges from data-driven to feature pieces in both English and Spanish.

Marisol is currently pursuing a Master of Business Administration at The University of Texas at El Paso to grow her skillset and expand her journalistic scope. Whenever she is not at school or working, she is writing poetry or spending time with friends and family.

Fiction
with Sheree Renée Thomas

Matthew Olivas is a first generation Mexican-American storyteller, daydreamer, Latine-futurist, and alumnus of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Matt made the long list for the  2021 Samuel R. Delany Fellowship and is a SFWA member. His work explores the intersection of queer and Latine experiences and can be found published or forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine,  Bourbon Penn Magazine, Speculative City Literary Magazine, and The Mesozoic Reader Anthology, among others. Matt’s debut novel, Sundown in San Ojuela, will be released by Lanternfish Press fall of 2023. Matt resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and spends their free time feeding their affinity for monster movies and collecting transforming robots.

#clarionghostclass

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

Mauricio Ruiz was born in Mexico City. His work has appeared in The Masters Review, Words Without Borders, Catapult, Letras Libres, Gatopardo, Revista de la Universidad, The Common, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature, among others. He’s been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish prizes, and received fellowships from OMI writers (NY), Société des auteurs (Belgium), Jakob Sande (Norway), Can Serrat (Spain), and the Three Seas Council (Rhodes.) He has attended the Tin House and One Story summer workshops and is an alumnus of Under the Volcano. His second collection, Silencios al sur, was published in 2017, and some of his stories have been translated into French and Dutch.

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

Megan Guiliano is a writer based in Durham, North Carolina, where she lives with her partner, two young children, a dog and four cats. She is currently working on a gothic novel about two teenage friends who discover an abandoned castle that may or may not be haunted. The castle’s turret becomes their hideaway, where they explore their sexuality and the limits of a friendship tested by secrets. She enjoys watching movies, dancing, playing music, and hiding from her children when possible.

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

Meryl Branch-McTiernan is a native New Yorker who splits her time between the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Hollywood. She writes fiction, creative nonfiction and screenplays. Her fiction has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and The Southampton Review. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Huffington Post, Chaleur Magazine, and Ritualwell. She recently produced her first movie, based on a screenplay she co-wrote, which is now in post-production. She is completing an MFA in Creative Writing at Stony Brook University. She lives in a fifth floor walkup apartment with her cat Tiger Lily, who enjoys the stairs much more than she does.  

Investigative Journalism
with Alfredo Corchado & Angela Kocherga

TRUTHTELLER FELLOWSHIP

Molly O’Toole is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, currently working on The Route, a nonfiction book on global migration through the Americas, to be published by Penguin Random House. She is also an immigration and security reporter for The Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C., as well as a Terker Fellow at George Washington University and a Logan Nonfiction Fellow. O’Toole has covered migration and security worldwide, for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Associated Press, Reuters and others. She was awarded the first Pulitzer in audio reporting in 2020 with This American Life and Emily Green of Vice, and has also been recognized by the Livingston Awards, the National Press Club and the Charles Rappleye Investigative Award. O’Toole is a graduate of Cornell and NYU and a karaoke, futbol, and sketching enthusiast, and will always be Californian, wherever she is.

Investigative Journalism
with Alfredo Corchado & Angela Kocherga

ROBERT L. BREEN FELLOWSHIP

Mónica Cerbón is an independent journalist. She reports, investigates and writes from Mexico’s Bajío region, covering violence, human rights, the environment and cases of corruption. Her political commitment is to regional journalism.

She writes for the magazine Proceso, as part of the project “Where do the disappeared go?” and as a participant in the Laboratory for Journalism and Public Opinion (PROPLAB).

In 2020 and 2021 she was a member of investigative teams that placed first and third for the Latin American Investigative Journalism Award given by the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad and in 2020 she was a finalist for the Gabo Prize from the Fundación Gabriel García Márquez.

She has been a fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation and the PRENDE program of the Universidad Iberoamericana and, since 2020, has been a member of Connectas, an online journalism platform of the Americas.

Investigative Journalism
with Alfredo Corchado & Angela Kocherga

TRUTHTELLER FELLOWSHIP

Oscar Lopez  is a Mexican-Australian journalist working in the New York Times’s Mexico City Bureau. Oscar has reported in more than a dozen countries for the likes of TIME, the Guardian, the Washington Post and many more. In 2020, he was named Journalist of the Year by the NLGJA, the U.S. association of LGBT+ journalists. A graduate of Melbourne University and the University of Oxford, he is currently developing a book project examining the current crisis of forced disappearance in Mexico and its links to the country’s Dirty War of the 1960s and 70s.

Also a passionate playwright, Oscar lives in Mexico City with his husband Joseph and his dogs Disco and Gus.

Writing of Witness
with Elizabeth Rosner

Pamela Powell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the day after a blizzard. A former sailor and boat captain, she has been working on a memoir for over a decade revolving around the stormy beginning of her life and her search for her absent father. A surprising DNA discovery turned her quest in new directions, including exploring the dimensions of time, memory, and intergenerational trauma. The author of The Turtle Watchers (Viking/Penguin, ‘92), a novel for children, numerous articles, short stories, anthology selections, and poems, she is a single mother of two and is in the life-changing process of moving north to a new home in a co-housing community in Vermont.  She is an alumna of Under the Volcano.

Seminario de Manuscritos
con Verónica Murguía

Nací y crecí en Mazatlán, Sinaloa, disfrutando los atardeceres sobre el Océano Pacífico. A los 18 años me fui a estudiar a la Ciudad de México, luego a Estados Unidos y en el 2002 me establecí en Guadalajara; pero el mar siempre me llama de regreso. En la escritura encontré mi pasión. Un modo de estar sobre la tierra (Textofilia/Editorial UDG 2021) es mi libro más reciente. Mi primer libro de cuentos, Nadie que me comprenda (Ficticia/ISIC 2018), ganó el Premio Nacional de Literatura Gilberto Owen 2015. Para niños he publicado Amigo virtual (Planeta 2021), Unos papás de verdad (Loqueleo 2019), Encrucijada (FOEM 2018), y Aventuras de una nube (Letras para volar 2017). Me gusta valerme de la ficción para invitar a quienes me leen a reflexionar sobre temas que preferimos no tocar. Cuando no estoy escribiendo dedico mi tiempo a GENDES, una organización que combate la violencia hacia las mujeres a través del trabajo con hombres, y a Aúna, una plataforma que impulsa los liderazgos de mujeres en la política. Soy ex-alumna de Under the Volcano.

I was born and raised in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, enjoying sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. At 18, I went to Mexico City to study, then to the United States, and finally settled in Guadalajara in 2002; but the sea always beckons. I found my passion in writing. Un modo de estar sobre la tierra (Textofilia/Editorial UDG 2021) is my latest book. My first book of short stories, Nadie que me comprenda (Ficticia/ISIC 2018), won the 2015 Gilberto Owen National Literature Award. I have published four books for children: Amigo virtual (Planeta 2021), Unos papás de verdad (Loqueleo 2019), Encrucijada (FOEM 2018), and Aventuras de una nube (Letras para volar 2017). I like to use fiction to invite readers to reflect on topics we often prefer not to talk about. When not writing, I devote my time to GENDES, an organization that fights violence against women through its work with men, and to Aúna, a platform that promotes the leadership of women in politics. I am an alumna of Under the Volcano.

Investigative Journalism

Rebecca is an independent writer from Kerala, India, who relocated during the pandemic to Brooklyn, New York. She was ineffably grateful to be a part of Under the Volcano in 2022, and is returning to rejoin the movement of people trying to soothe this festering world through their words. Rebecca has a keen interest in the impact of globalization on the cultures and lives of rural and Indigenous communities, and is currently working on ‘Pawns of Progress’—a documentary film that follows the story of an Indian farmer and his family, and the absurdities of the global economic paradigm they’ve inherited. Her work has been published with Earth Island Journal, Vice Media, Homegrown India and a few more. She is the Communications Strategist and Alumni Coordinator for Under the Volcano.

Poetry Manuscript Seminar
with Keetje Kuipers

Rosa Castellano is a poet and teacher whose work was recently supported with a year-long fellowship from the Visual Arts Center of Virginia and by Tin House. In 2021, she was a finalist for Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay . Her work can be found or is forthcoming from The Rhino, South Hampton Review, EcoTheo Review and Alternating Current Press.  She has an MFA in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Fiction
with Sheree Renée Thomas 

Sarah Clift is a screenwriter, film director and script consultant from the United Kingdom, based between Mexico and the North of England. In recent years she has begun writing fiction and is currently embarking upon a book of short stories loosely based around her feminist foibles. She has won numerous international awards for her short films, as both writer and director, and is currently in development of her debut feature film Spinsterhood, with support from the British Film Institute, an alternative look at life without marriage in working class England, ca,1800. Sarah has a second feature in development, The Life of a Saint, a folkloric tale about femicide in Latin America, written in Spanish.  Although she has completed many screenwriting labs, Under the Volcano will be her first in fiction, and also her first in Latin America. Sarah first came to Mexico ten years ago on a horse-riding trip and camped with local vaqueros and their families. It is one of her favourite places in the world.  

Fiction
with Sabrina Orah Mark

Sophie Nau was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her writing is heavily influenced by her hometown, and by the culture, people and geographies of the food and beverage industries. She is interested in the themes of women and work, labor and food, and in how to write honestly about place. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been selected as a semi-finalist for American Short Fiction’s Halifax Ranch Prize. Currently based in New Orleans, while wrapping up her MFA and writing for Country Roads magazine she recently completed her WSET Level 2 in wine.

Fiction
with Sheree Renée Thomas

Steve Medcroft is the author of the supernatural thrillers Succubus and The Singer. His most recent novel, Noah, is on submission to agents and publishers. His current work-in-progress, which picks up the foundation laid in Noah, will be completed in 2023. Prior to turning his focus to fiction, Steve Medcroft was a freelance writer for newspapers, magazines and websites (mostly in the sport of cycling). He also worked as an advertising copywriter and is the author of two non-fiction books for small businesses.

He’s based in Waddell, Arizona, with his wife of 31 years and is an avid cyclist.

Poesía
con Elisa Díaz Castelo

Ximena Taborga vive en la Ciudad de México. Es licenciada en Letras Inglesas por la UNAM y estudiante de la Maestría en Letras Latinoamericanas en la misma universidad. Le gusta fotografiar altares, jugar con su gatita Drácula y escribir sobre moda y abyección.  Actualmente escribe una nueva colección de poesía sobre la basura.

Ximena Taborga lives in Mexico City. She has a degree in English literatura from UNAM  and is currently pursuing a masters in Latin American literature  She likes to take photographs of altars, play with her cat Drácula and write about fashion and abjectness.  Her new poetry collection is about garbage.