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mfaunlv · 7 years

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Meet the New Class!

It is our pleasure to announce the writers who will join our UNLV community this coming Fall 2017 semester! Congratulations to all of them, and welcome to Vegas!

PHD/BLACK MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE FELLOWS

Sam Gilpin is a poet from Portland, OR. He received a BA in English from the University of Utah and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is a voracious reader interested in 21st century poetry, critical theory, and the avant-garde. His work has appeared in Prism Review, Prime Number, and Ruminate, among others. He is an avid people watcher, jazz aficionado, and a devoted cat dad.

Wendy Wimmer Schuchart is a Green Bay writer and editor. She is currently managing webinar and editorial projects at an online tech publication. Wendy is a graduate of the UW – Green Bay English program and received her Master of Arts in Creative Writing from UW – Milwaukee. She has spearheaded a small indie digital writer conference held in Green Bay annually for the last thirteen years that has raised over $30,000 for local charities and most recently co-founded a book and author festival called UntitledTown which in its first year attracted more than 2000 festival participants and hosted over 80 authors Margaret Atwood, Sherman Alexie, Dan Chaon, Ben Percy, Nickolas Butler, Kate Harding and Michael Perry. Her passion is in community building and connecting with writers and readers. Her work has been published recently in Per Contra, Barrelhouse, Drunken Boat, Paper Darts, Blackbird, and more. She is currently a fiction editor for Barrelhouse literary journal. Her short fiction has won numerous awards and been nominated for Best New American Voices and the Pushcart Prize. She is also active in organizing area writing workshops and other writing events.

MFA Fiction

Daynee (die-nay) Rosales is a journalist and award-winning radio producer from Cochabamba, Bolivia. She received her BA in English from George Mason University in 2011, after which she moved to Alaska to pursue her dream of becoming a radio DJ/ambulance driver. Part serious and part whimsy, Daynee is passionate about using her creative abilities to make a positive impact in her community— wherever that may be (she has moved too many times to count). Her latest radio project, CHISPA, features the stories of latinx and LGBTQ youth speaking about their personal experiences with immigration, exile, and loss. Her next project could easily be a one-act play about a missing sock crisis. With Daynee, you just never know.

Roy Johnson grew up in Seattle, Washington, where he attended high school on Mercer Island. He received his BA in philosophy from Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, and later studied history at Dixie State University in Saint George, Utah. Roy loves to read and to hike with his daughter, the Z.

Karli Tokala Rouse was born in the Sandhills of western Nebraska but grew up in Las Vegas. She inherited the love of storytelling from her father, a citizen of the Ihanktonwan Dakota Oyate, who would take their family on annual road trips back east, passing down traditions and the history of places they passed along the way. Her writing results from following threads, seeking to reflect multiplicities rather than absolutes. When not swimming in the sea of written word, she spends her time hiking, practicing Tai Chi, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and discovering unconventional uses for the plethora of spices in her kitchen. She will be graduating from UNLV with her BA in English this spring.

Dylan Fisher is from the California suburbs, not any suburb, but a California one, a San Francisco one, one he promptly left behind to attend Grinnell College, there receiving a B.A. in Anthropology, after which he remained in the Midwest, first moving to Duluth, Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior, the greatest of the Great Lakes, but then back to California, and then on to Austin, Texas, where, at the time of this writing, he works as a grant writer for a perpetually underfunded nonprofit, the latest in a long string of jobs that have taken him -- always by means of his 2003 Ford Taurus, which, bless our hearts, is still running to this day -- from one American city to the next.

Lindsay Olson grew up in Salt Lake City but has spent the last five years in Pontiac Michigan, just outside Detroit where she dabbled in oil painting, floral design and completing her BA in Creative Writing. She is the founding editor of The Oakland Arts Review and her work has appeared in Quarterly West, The Oakland Journal, and Inscape among others, with publication forthcoming in Prison Pedagogy. She considers herself a nonfiction writer, but has a tendency to make stuff up. She owns 127 ceramic mugs.

MFA Poetry

Maxwell Gontarek moved to Baltimore from Philadelphia to earn a BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. His work has appeared in Apiary, Blazevox, Vector, Zeniada, and Jenkem Magazine. Poetry is everything to him and music is everything else. He enjoys making up various pseudonyms almost as much as he enjoys making music under various pseudonyms such as Percy Sludge, Pace Fortune, Beast Install, and D.S. Burner.

Leisa Loan is from Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a degree in Musical Theatre and Creative Writing. In recent years she has found herself on many Greyhound buses living between New York City, Boston, and Nashville. Her passions aside from the obvious reading and writing are singing and seeing live music...the louder and messier the better. She is very concerned her East Coast blood may cause her to melt in the desert heat, but also considers it to be the work of fate that the year she moves to Vegas they will be getting their own NHL team. So at the very least she can see her beloved Boston Bruins from the comfort of an ice cold arena and feel at home. She feels very odd but also a bit regal writing about herself in the third person like this.

Antonie Frankie Aquino’s native roots web between the holographic computerized colosseum and the barren Mohave’s infamous playground, Las Vegas, where he competed for his modern medal in Bachelor’s of English. A 2016 Winter graduate of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, Antonie gracefully was supported by troops of Pepsi cans and nuclear family. Besides his academic checklists, his other lists come by as suits: a photographer, visualizer, and speculator of the stellar sector. He enjoys smoked out books and boots which spur his quantum wheels. With his map still rolling and dice loaded, Antonie thinks that deserts deserve two s’s.

Claire Morgan received her B.A. in English from the University of Georgia, where she was a member of the rowing team. Since graduation, she has spent time in central Italy teaching English to children, as well as interning at The Georgia Review in Athens, GA. Claire's interests include micropoetry, medieval literature, horror anime, and Troll 2.

Tyler Smith is a poet from Maiden Rock, WI, a town on a lake too small for its own good. Most of his days were spent dockside reading the works of Tim O’Brien or eavesdropping onto patio bar conversations across the railroad tracks. Travel, strong drink, and strange company inspire him in all creative endeavors. He considers himself a stargazer kind of guy. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Recently he has taken to wearing pants.

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