Meet our Students

Dena Afrasiabi (fiction) was born in Shiraz, Iran (city of poets, wine and flowers).  When she was two, the Iranian government imposed oppressive changes after the 1979 revolution, and her family fled to the U.S. in search of freedom.  Finally settling in Chico, California, she grew up listening to her parents and their friends tell colorful stories about their lives back home. She received her B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and continued to write while working as a music librarian at Yahoo! in Santa Monica, California.  She is pleased to join the MFA Program at Rutgers-Newark and be part of its welcoming community. 

Mauro Altamura (fiction) is a writer and visual artist born and raised in New Jersey. Urban Hudson County, particularly Hoboken and Jersey City, have shaped his outlook and creative work. He received a BA in Fine Art from Ramapo College of NJ (1976), and an MFA in Visual Studies from SUNY Buffalo (1981), through the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY.  He first taught at the University of Akron, but returned to the New York area and worked as a house painter, truck-driver, construction worker, gallery exhibition installer, artist’s model, and teacher, while creating and exhibiting his artwork. He works primarily in photography, has exhibited nationally and internationally, and received an NEA Fellowship and several State Arts Fellowships from New Jersey and New York. He has taught at Jersey City State College as a full time professor since 1994, and has also taught at John Cabot University, in Rome, Italy. He is presently an Associate Professor at New Jersey City University. 

Melissa Aranzamendez (fiction) was born in Manila and moved to Jersey City at fourteen.  Her fiction and poetry are anthologized in  New To North America: Writings by U.S. Immigrants and their Children and Grandchildren (Burning Bush, 1997), Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America (Anvil, 1997), Sunlight on the Moon (Carpenter Gothic, 1998) and Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas (Calyx, 2003).  She lives in Belleville, NJ and is the proud mom of a Rutgers SCILS senior.  A mechanical engineer by training, she is thrilled to be writing again and is proud and honored to be a member of RU-Newark’s inaugural MFA class.

Chidi Asoluka (fiction) is from Irvington, NJ. He is a 2005 graduate of Georgetown University, with a degree in English and a double minor in African American Studies/Arts. Since graduation, he has worked as a Post-Placement Counselor at Prep for Prep, a non profit organization that prepares and places inner city NYC students at independent schools across the east coast.  He has been fascinated with words for as long as he can remember. He is especially passionate about Nigerian authors Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe, and Chris Abani, which he supposes is a testament to his Nigerian heritage.  He looks forward to being a part of the inaugural MFA class at Rutgers, and in turn helping to create a unique writer’s community in Newark.  Chidi was named a Finalist in the Hurston Wright

diego báez graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2007 with a BA in English.  He enjoys punctuation in general, and guillemets, specifically.  He abhors television and adores Nam June Paik.  Much of his writing is informed by his experiences as an American in Paraguay -- a role to which he cannot wait to return. Until then, he is very much looking forward to meeting and working with the writers at Rutgers.

Scott Bowman (fiction) grew up in New Jersey and Massachusetts.  He studied history and rowed crew while at Brown University.  After working as a teacher and nonprofit professional, Scott attended Fordham Law School before serving two clerkships and practicing law at a firm in New York.  Through it all, he tried to find time to write and read fiction.  He couldn't be more excited to be part of a community of people doing the same.  He now teaches English Composition in the Writing Program at Rutgers-Newark.  He looks forward to the publication of a short piece in the Spring 2009 edition of "Quarter After Eight"

Moriah Cohen (poetry) is a single mother who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Ramapo College with a BA in Literature. She was published in the 2006 and 2008 editions of Ramapo’s literary magazine, which she recently helped edit. Moriah is the 2007 recipient of the Helen Burchell Award and the 2008 recipient of the Lee Sennish Award. Her poetic influences include James Hoch, Sharon Olds, and Patrick Phillips. Moriah is happily anticipating working with the faculty at Rutgers-Newark.

Caleb Das (fiction) is moving to Newark from Vancouver, BC after completing his BFA in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia. Caleb grew up in Oman and London, and explored pre-med before turning full time to writing.  He played in a black metal band in Vancouver and has just acquired a gorgeous PRS named Aztlan on a road trip. He's very excited to be part of the program at Rutgers-Newark and looks forward to working with all its wonderful writers as well as owning at Mr. Do (a skill ascendant video game located in the shadows of McGovern’s).

Zahra Marie Darby(poetry) grew up in Miami, FL, and attended the eminent Charles R. Drew Elementary School in Liberty City. By the third grade, she won two first-place awards for the recitation of poetry by Langston Hughes, whom she credits for her love of verse and of pairing words with pain.  She received a B.A. in English (2004) from Spelman College, where her poems appeared in L-I-N-K-E-D literary online journal and Focus literary magazine. Most recently, Zahra has reported for a bi-weekly newspaper whose mission is to inform and connect members of the African Diaspora.  She hopes her MFA courses will help her become, to borrow from Rigoberto Gonzalez, an "academic poet." Zahra is most excited to be a first year student in the MFA Program at Rutgers Newark.
 
Owen Duffy (fiction) is thirty-one and lives in North Plainfield with his wife, Liz. He runs his own musical instrument business, received his BA at Montclair State University, and spent a summer semester at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is now a second year MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark, where he also teaches writing and composition. He is working on a collection of short stories for his thesis, and is looking forward to his second year in the program.

Brett Duquette (fiction) was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska.  He graduated from Eureka College (Eureka, IL) in 2007 with a double major in English and Philosophy/Religion and a minor in Music.  He is very active in social causes and began began a campus recycling program at Eureka, as well as a free contraceptives program. He volunteers annually at Camp Kindle, a Nebraskan children’s camp for youth affected and/or infected with HIV/AIDS.  He enjoys music, films, and literature, and spends most of his time consuming them. His favorite authors are John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Joseph Heller, and Charles Dickens, though he doesn’t really put much stock in favorites.  Brett transitioned from a small, rural undergraduate liberal arts school (population 500 students), to urban, diverse Rutgers Newark, where he is a second year student in the MFA Program.

Daniel Flynn (poetry) grew up on the Jersey Shore and still lives in the shore town of Brick.  His interest in literature and writing was as an alternative to the steady grind of undergraduate pre-med studies at The College of New Jersey (1997), where he abandoned Biology and majored in English.  The works of writers Henry James and Robert Frost influenced his understanding and appreciation of language.  After minor publishing success in feature writing, Daniel received an alternate license to teach in the State of New Jersey in 2000 and became a successful teacher of English at Freehold High School.  He is a second year MFA student at Rutgers Newark.  Life, for Daniel, is about using and questioning language – “the rest is silence.”

Rachel Friedman (nonfiction) grew up in Manlius, N.Y.  She completed a B.A. and M.A. in English at University of Pennsylvania, working and backpacking through Europe, Australasia and South America for two years between degrees. In Peru, she missed Machu Picchu because of a landslide but picked up some Spanish and her New Zealander husband, with whom she currently resides in Hoboken, New Jersey.  They recently adopted an old Beagle named Tyler who snores even when he is awake.  She is delighted to be a second year MFA student at Rutgers-Newark, where she formally pursues her passion for unearthing personal histories and sharing them others.  

Michael L. Grahlfs (poetry) grew up in East Rockaway, NY.  He graduated from Seton Hall University with a major in English and a minor in Political Science.  The works and teachings of Albert Einstein, Buddha, A.R. Ammons, and contemporary poet and Professor, Steven Gehrke, are major sources of inspiration and understanding. Michael hopes to bicycle from New York to Colorado this summer, and believes that communication is key in breaking down stereotypes and predisposed judgments. Currently residing in South Orange, New Jersey, Michael looks forward to his second year in the Rutgers-Newark MFA Program.

Jacqueline Hardy (fiction) has been writing fiction around her full time schedule as a lawyer through various fiction workshops in New York City. With three published short stories to her name, Jacquie loves the power and beauty of the written word. The first storyteller she heard as a child was her mother. She listened to her mother talk to friends and relatives about other people—gossip; Jacquie loves the drama of other peoples’ lives, rather than her own. Her favorite writers are Shakespeare, Faulkner, O’Connor, and early Morrison. Jacqueline is the proud mother of one son who is currently applying to Ph.D. programs around the country.

Saeed Jones (poetry) was raised in North Texas and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. He recently received a BA in English-Writing from Western Kentucky University. While at Western, he competed for the speech/debate team and won several national and international titles. Along the way, he met poet and professor Tom Hunley, who introduced him to poetry as a discipline and to the broader literary community. He loves reading the New York Times Theater section and discussing duende, male feminism, and Nichiren Buddhism. He is thrilled to be a part of the RN family because of its faculty, proximity to Manhattan, diversity, and dedication to developing emerging writers.

Jaime Karnes (fiction) was raised in idyllic Burlington, Vermont.  She is a graduate of The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas - a surprisingly hip and sassy mid-western town where she spent the last seven years working first in restaurants and later as a freelance copywriter.  Jaime is a scholarship recipient for the 2008 Southampton Writers Conference and the Vermont College Postgraduate Writers Workshop.  She is looking forward to teaching at Rutgers in the fall and is honored to take part in this exciting MFA Program.

Sue Kenney (fiction) was raised in Northern New Jersey, but went to Arizona State University for her BA in English, graduating in 1980.  After a three year stint in advertising, she began bartending, and eventually bought her own restaurant/bar.  Managing the restaurant was her full-time plus gig for the next sixteen years, but the pull of writing and learning remained strong.  She went back for an MA in English (concentration in writing) at William Paterson University, and started teaching there in 2002 in addition to her restaurant work.  She sold her business last August, and is very much looking forward to submerging herself in the writing life again. She's an avid traveler (China, Kenya, Vietnam, Estonia, Russia, etc.) with an interest in cross-cultural connections, and likes to use foreign settings as backdrops in her fiction. 

Gaganpreet Kaur (poetry) emigrated from Punjab, India with her family at age eleven, settling in Queens, New York. She began her college education at Queens College (CUNY), double-majoring in English and Philosophy. She is now an English teacher at Richmond Hill High School in New York City, where she advises a student literary magazine and assembles a high school Poetry Slam when not busy with lesson plans or grading papers.  More than ever, she wants to write poetry. For now, she balances school and work, NY and NJ.  If god were alive, Gaganpreet would pray during her two-hour rides to work. She confides that The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius isn’t such a bad time-pass, either.

Amy Kiger-Williams (fiction) lives in West Caldwell, NJ, with her husband and three children (ages 9, 7, and 5).  She was born in Warsaw, Indiana, and has lived in Lancaster, PA and New York City.  She earned a BA in Comparative Literature/Creative Writing from NYU in 1990.  She has worked on a Wall Street trading floor, at an internet startup, for a consulting firm, and also has had a small business selling fabric online.  In addition to writing and reading, she enjoys making quilts, mixed media art, and jewelry. Her favorite writers include Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, Mary Gaitskill, Amy Hempel and Alice Munro, to name a few.  She has published in Vestal Review, Pindeldyboz and Juked, and is currently at work on a novel.  She is very excited to be part of the inaugural MFA class at Rutgers Newark and looks forward to her second year in the program.

Kevin Kilroy (poetry) was born and raised in Little Egg Harbor, NJ.  He attended Hofstra University, where he received his BA in English Literature and Creative Writing. He moved to Queens in 2006, where he worked as a waiter, bartender, and canvasser for the Working Families Party in Brooklyn. He currently lives in the Heights in Jersey City and works as a waiter in midtown Manhattan.  A musician, he plays piano and guitar, considers himself a drummer first and foremost, and has recently developed an appreciation for jazz.  He enjoys traveling, plans a trip to Ireland, and loves mixology (the histories and finer points of - as well as indulging in - various liquors and beers).  His literary influences include Hemingway, Salinger, Bukowski, Creeley, Hayes, Camus, and Faulkner.  He looks forward to his second year in the inaugural MFA class of Rutgers Newark.

Michael Liska has spent his entire life in New Jersey.  He was born in Edison, lives in Highland Park, and currently works in Newark at the New Jersey Institute of Technology as a grant administrator.  He spends most of his time playing the accordion, writing, keeping records of his dreams, and backpacking.  He studied philosophy at Rutgers, where he received his BA in 2000.  He has spent the past several years writing, playing in bands, traveling when he could afford it, and working at odd jobs.  He is a pantheist and looks forward to his second year in the inaugural MFA class at Rutgers Newark.

Eleonora Luongo (poetry) was born and raised in Elizabeth, NJ. Nora's writing journey began with a blue diary that one of her grandparents brought to her from Italy. She studied architecture for two years at NJIT, became fascinated with the shiny-new and exciting "world wide web", and defected to earn her degree in computer science. Her NJIT English professor suggested she get a minor in literature, and it was in her poetry class that she was first called a poet.  She spent many summers visiting family in southern Italy, and recently got married in Amalfi. She currently works at Rutgers-Newark, is excited about the MFA Program, and hopes to choose Literature/Book Arts as her concentration.

Maria V. Luna (fiction) has long enjoyed a love affair with literature, and was introduced to writing as a Rutgers University undergrad.  In the past six years, she has wandered the corporate halls of Coca-Cola, Linens ‘N Things and Chanel Inc. in search of a fruitful existence, but found herself in a sterile community whose reading interests seemed to stretch no further than Good Housekeeping. She happily anticipates being part of a literary community again at Rutgers Newark.  As an expression of gratitude for the many generosities received in her life, she has served for four years as a volunteer tutor with Literacy Volunteers of America, helping Hispanic adults engage in literacy, obtain citizenship and express their basic needs.  Her latest commitment has focused on obtaining her first cord in Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art and national sport.  She’s also hatching a plan to dance a little samba on the beaches of Bahia one day soon. 

Jennifer Mayo (fiction) graduated from New Jersey City University in 2005 with a degree in English (Creative Writing) and a minor in Media Arts.  She has worked as an associate editor for a legal reference book for the past two years.   She is currently reading Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), but has a special space on one of her four bookshelves for her favorites, including: Interpreter of Maladies, (Jhumpa Lahiri), Bastard Out of Carolina (Dorothy Allison), and Remainder (Tom McCarthy).  When she's not hunched over her laptop writing, she can be found painting, knitting, or cooking in her apartment.  For the first time since kindergarten, she's truly looking forward to school in September.

Brandon Mazur (poetry) studied Creative Writing and Anthropology as an undergraduate at Rutgers Newark and received a Rosenberg Prize in 2006.  A second year student, he teaches Composition to undergraduates at RN and lives in Jersey City, where he enjoys fire escape gardening.

Jacob T. McCall (poetry) was born in Deerfield Beach, FL, the youngest of four sons of a paperboy from the streets of New York City and a South Florida preschool teacher. The elder McCall told his son endless stories about his urban homeland, instilling in young Jacob a wish to see and experience the city for himself.  He earned a football scholarship to Fordham University in 2000 and graduated with a BA in English (2004).  He earned a living as a substitute teacher while attending Joshua Springs Bible College, where he prepared a paper for the 2005 Media Ecology Association Conference about Racial Caricatures in Video Games. He left Joshua Springs in the summer of 2005 due to theological differences, returned home, worked as a Recreation Minister, and became a public school teacher.  He worked at becoming a well-rounded individual while planning his return to graduate school and the pursuit of his new dream: becoming Poet Laureate of the U.S.  Jacob has enjoyed the challenges of Rutgers Newark, where he is a second year MFA student.

Ryan McIlvain (fiction) was born in Utah and raised in Massachusetts.  He spent two years in Brazil as a Mormon missionary after high school, then enrolled at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) as a twenty-one-year-old freshman, the picture of glamour. He received a B.A. in English a few years later. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Potomac Review, The Chattahoochee Review, and other magazines. He and his wife Brooke live in Florham Park, New Jersey.

Erin McMillan (fiction) is originally from Chicago, and comes to Rutgers from northwest Minnesota. She graduated with a degree in English from Miami University of Ohio (1996), and received her M.A. in English from Bemidji State University (2007). Between degrees, she spent four years snowboarding and working as a baker in Aspen, Colorado, then entered the non-profit world and worked as the director of a small history museum in Minnesota.  Most recently, she has supported her writing efforts and education by working as a freelance grant writer, contract archivist, knitting instructor and part-time book seller. Erin teaches Composition at Rutgers Newark and pleased to begin her second year in the diverse and motivated community of writers in the MFA Program.

MaryRose Merkel (fiction) graduated from Johns Hopkins and migrated to Kyiv, Ukraine, where she monitored elections and watched the Orange Revolution rapidly deflate.  She then moved to West Virginia, where she spent quality time in another tent city, not far from Harpers Ferry.  Due to her fascination with Slavic studies, she reads much too much Socialist Realism, and greatly admires Vladimir Nabokov for breaking out of that mold.  Her current favorite read is "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami.

Moira Moody (fiction) is from Philadelphia, PA. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and then spent a year of service, instructing at-risk youth in local high school students in building gardens. She often writes about day-to-day life in North Philadelphia and its historical legacy, and has managed to get dozens of people to do the same (http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/juniorfellow/scrapbook). She has always enjoyed writing and most recently took a corporate editing position, but she is very excited to be her own content designer as a student in the Rutgers Newark MFA Program.

Ryan Mulligan (poetry) is from Kearny, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers Newark with a B.A. in English (2005) and returned to considerable fanfare in the fall of 2007 as part of the MFA Program. Thanks to the advice and wisdom of his inspiring teachers and fellow students, he learned more about the art of poetry in his first year in the program than he’d ever even previously considered.  The nurturing environment encouraged his work and guided him in all the right directions.  Other than writing, Ryan enjoys punk rock and cereal.  He looks forward to his final year in the program and knows that he will only continue to mature as a poet, thanks to the many talents of those around him.

Betsy Narváez (Fiction) was raised in the Bronx, the youngest child and only daughter of very traditional (to put it lightly) Ecuadorian parents.  She has lived in Jackson Heights, Queens for the past three years and was a Nueroscience and Behavior major for a week at Wesleyan University (B.A. 2004) before she came to her senses and declared a double major in English and American Studies. She has worked as a program assistant in the literature department at Americas Society,  assisting in production of the non-profit's literary and academic journal Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. Shealso works as an independent English/Spanish translator and has tried her hand at interpreting. She is excited about the faculty, the students, and the energy of the Rutgers Newark MFA Program.

Aimee Rinehart (fiction) was born in Indiana and reckoned early on that typing and driving straight-stick could take her places. She graduated from Indiana University and she drove to Los Angeles on a magazine fellowship, then returned to Indiana to report on cops and county fairs for four whole months before fleeing to New York.  She helped start Web sites for Reader’s Digest and The New York Times during the dot-com boom, then went to Brussels to work for The Wall Street Journal, where she expanded her food repertoire and personal finance know-how. She returned to New York in 2003 and has juggled a variety of freelance assignments. She gravitates toward writers who were journalists, such as Annie Proulx and Kurt Vonnegut. She lives in Jersey City, NJ, and is excited to help shape Rutgers Newark’s MFA Program as a second year student.

Evan James Roskos (fiction) was born and raised in New Jersey, a state he maligned for the poor quality of its air, politics, and people but adored for its delicious produce. He earned his English BA at Rowan University (2000) and his MA from Rutgers University – Camden (2006).  His thesis examined fatherhood and guns in the novels of Don DeLillo.  Between degrees, Evan worked at a .com self-publisher that churned out countless books about Nazis, sex, angels, and frightening combinations of those ideas. A dedicated but stressed-out production manager responsible for designers in both Philadelphia and the Philippines, Evan utilized his company’s resources In 2002 to self-publish a collection of short stories titled Stuck.  He won an Honorable Mention for poetry in Writer’s Digest’s 2003 writing contest, has published in Reed and, most recently in Granta, as part of their "New Voices" feature. He attended the 2008 Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and lives in Collingswood, NJ, with his wife, Laura, and their ten-year-old, toothless pit bull, Sable. He teaches composition, creative writing, and literature courses. The one thing he constantly tells his students (and himself) is: “It’s all material.”

Dawn Ryan (fiction) is from Watertown MA. She’s a graduate of Brandeis University and lived most recently in San Diego, CA, where she sometimes worked at Starbucks and sometimes worked for a bumbling caterer. She is a cat person and has two lovely kittens, Otto and Simon.  Her story "The Strauss House" will appear in McSweeney's, issue 29, in November ’08.  Dawn is very happy to continue as a second year student in the Rutgers Newark MFA Program. She’s always enjoyed reading and writing, and though she's always secretly wished she'd been born a cartoonist, she knows fiction is her calling.

Kim Shaw (fiction) is from Queens, NY, but has resided in Roselle, NJ for the past ten years with her husband and two children.  She is a graduate of Baruch College, with a degree in English/Creative Writing and Journalism.  She spent 15 years working as a legal secretary at white collar, criminal and civil litigation firms.  In 2004, she traded in her stenography pad for a blackboard and became a high school English teacher.  Kim is a published romance novelist and expects her fifth release this September.  She has loved writing since the age of seven and is an avid reader of authors ranging from Piri Thomas to Toni Morrison. Having earned a place in the inaugural MFA class at Rutgers University is a another one of her dreams come true, and she looks forward to her second year in the program.

Joanne Sills (fiction) grew up in Jamaica, Queens, a "migration baby." Her father was from rural Georgia and her mother’s folks from Texas. Both sides of the family enjoyed visiting and spirited storytelling and Joanne’s imagination so rooted. She wrote stories on anything, napkins or notebooks; her younger sisters tell of involuntary basement performances of her plays. She is a graduate of the City College of New York where she majored in cultural anthropology. Joanne used her love of listening and writing as a street reporter in Philadelphia, and later an editor at The Star-Ledger in Newark. She is likely to carry a slim book of verse in her purse and savors the work of assorted writers — Robert Hayden and Edna O’Brien, Natasha Trethewey and Cristina Garcia. Ben Okri. She is at work on a novel, a project enthusiastically supported by her 21-year-old son.  Joanne lives in South Orange.

Tom Small (fiction) has long nurtured the dream of being part of a creative writing program such as Rutgers Newark.   He graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in Psychology, spent his professional life as a real estate appraiser, and lives in Maplewood, NJ. Reading and writing have always been important to him; when traveling, he judges the livability of a particular locale by the quality of its library.  His short story, “The Librarian’s Assistant,” received an honorable mention in the Waasmode Fiction Competition and was published (2006) in Passages North, the literary magazine of Northern  Michigan University.  He is an active member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writer’s Group. Two of his stories, “Manila” and “Dawson’s Geek,” were selected for readings at the Touchstone Theater Fireside Friday series in Easton, PA .  He and his wife have raised a succession of Pug dogs, including one who was a biter.

Jean YeoJin Sung (poetry) was born in South Korea and raised in Cherry Hill, NJ, where she grew to love writing, reading, art, and football. She received her BA in 2004 from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she designed her focus of study around Creative Writing, Art History, and Photography, and was awarded the Herbert J. Rubin Award for Poetry. She received her Master's in Public Administration in 2008 from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service. While completing her MPA, she coordinated numerous enrichment programs for New York City public schools at NYU and bartended at an East Village karaoke bar. She is passionate about her work with Day One, where she coordinates the Youth Voices Network, which supports survivors of teen dating violence in speaking out and raising awareness. Currently residing in Brooklyn, she is excited to return to her Jersey roots and her love of writing as a member of the Rutgers-Newark MFA Program.

Lisa Toniolo (fiction) was born in Newark, NJ, where she lived until her move to Belleville at the age of 25.  She graduated from Rutgers University – Newark with an English major and Music minor.  Currently employed by the Rutgers University – Newark English Department, she spends most of her free time reading, writing, listening to music, playing the bass, and hanging out with her young nieces and nephew.  Her favorite authors include Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Chuck Palahniuk, William Shakespeare, Hunter S. Thompson and Toni Morrison.  She writes with the illusion of one day getting paid to scribble nonsense on paper by day while playing shows with her unknown rock band by night.  She is excited to have a chance to acquire a graduate degree from Rutgers, as everyone in her immediate family has graduated from the university.

Paul Vidich (fiction) received a BA from Wesleyan University (1972) and an MBA from Wharton (1981). He left Time Warner in 2006 after nineteen years as a senior executive in its Warner Music and AOL divisions. In seeking his MFA at Rutgers-Newark, he is returning to an ambition and dream that he set aside when he set off on his business career. He is an active biker, scuba diver, theater-goer, and board member of Poets and Writers, El Museo del Bario and The New School For School Research. He lives in Lower Manhattan with his wife, Linda, a Ph.D candidate in comparative literature. They have two grown sons, one an architect and the other a performance artist. His short stories have been published in several online and print publications, including Wordriot, Wheelhousemagazine, Mrbellersneighborhood. His story “Home Theater” was short-listed for the 2008 Raymond Carver Short Story Award and was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. In June 2008, he was an invited panelist at the International Short Story Confe rence in Cork, Ireland where he presented a paper on Poe, Borges and Dostoevsky.

Rich Villar (poetry) is a poet of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent originally from Paterson, NJ. He has been writing practically his entire life, but first encountered modern poetics through an amazing literature professor at community college. Soon afterward, he settled into a short career in the highly exciting field of retail consumer electronics sales and began working toward law school. He then realized that he hated both DVD players and the lawyer's life. He quit retail by 2003 and began appearing on the slam and spoken scenes in New York, then started a freelance career teaching poetry and spoken word to kids on a grassroots level (various nonprofits, school visits, etc.). He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, and became involved with a reading series for Latino/a poets called Acentos, based in the South Bronx. Today, he serves as its host and curator and is working with a dedicated circle of friends to build it into an national organization to support the Latino/a voice in American and international letters. Rich is writing like crazy, reading like crazy, and generally trying not to BE crazy.