Featured Students & Alumni

Tracey Lien was born and raised in southwestern Sydney, Australia. She earned her MFA at the University of Kansas and was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. All That's Left Unsaid is her first novel.

Lee Romney spent 23 years as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, developing an expertise in mental health, immigration, criminal justice reform, and Native American tribal lands. She took a buyout in late 2015 to freelance in-depth projects close to her heart and learn audio storytelling. Her print work has appeared in The Guardian, EdSource and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Her award-winning radio pieces have aired on Radiolab, KQED's The California Report Magazine, Making Conatact and NPR's Here & Now. She is currently collaborating with a former public defender on the podcast November in My Soul.

Norm Mattox is a poet. He served as a bilingual educator in the public school system of San Francisco Unified School District for over 30 years. Though retired, Norm is a teacher ('maestro' in Spanish) for life. His poetry is a journey through the voices that tell a story of love in a time of struggle and challenge. Norm has shared his poetry as a featured reader, at open mics around the San Francisco Bay Area, select venues in New York City and other parts of the world across the 'zoom universe'. Norm's poetry has been published in two chapbooks. His first collection is titled, Get Home Safe, Poems for Crossing the Community Grid. Norm’s second chapbook length collection is titled Black Calculus, published in 2021 by Nomadic Press. An audiobook by the same title was released in 2021.

Han Raschka is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work focuses on trauma, recovery, and queer existence. They have been published in various periodicals such as Anti-Heroin Chic, Eunoia Review, The Lake County Bloom, and CERASUS Magazine, among others. They have received fellowships from the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute and Brooklyn Poets and were featured as Poet of the Week with Brooklyn Poets. Their first collection, Splinters (Collapse Press) was released in 2022 and was nominated for the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. In 2023, they released a chapbook, Enamel (Bottlecap Press). Han was a 2023 finalist for the Charles M. Hart Jr. Award at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they study creative writing. They currently reside in Madison, WI with their partner. 

Brianna is a writer, teacher, and technologist. She obtained her Business Administration degree at the University of Southern California. After taking classes at SFCWI, she developed a writing portfolio and applied to Columbia University's MFA Program in Fiction. Afterward, she became a faculty member at MIT. Before attending graduate school and transitioning into university teaching, she consulted for a Fortune 25 digital organization. She has industry experience in financial and marketing technology, specializing in project management, customer engagement, process optimization, and new product development along with Academic Writing with a focus on Data and Society. She's currently working on a memoir manuscript.

Rowena Choy Henry grew up in San Francisco. When she was young, she witnessed the impact of poverty and deprivations on her family, after her father abandoned his wife, a Korean
immigrant, to fend for herself and their children. Rowena later became a nurse and cared for cancer patients. She studied writing after she retired and has read stories at Oakland's Beast Crawl Literary Festival and the San Francisco Public Library Performance: City Stories. In 2022 her play, The Joe Boy, was featured in The Playwrights' Center of San Francisco BIPOC Expressions Showcase. Rowena is currently working on her memoir.

Brittany Elyse Vargas is a versatile journalist and writer with a rich background in wellness, travel, lifestyle, local news, science, and culture. She has contributed to various digital and print publications, bringing a keen eye and insightful perspective to each piece. As a copywriter and ghostwriter, Brittany specializes in helping clients in the personal development and wellness fields expand their reach and impact.

Currently, Brittany is a featured writer for Integrative Practitioner, the premier interdisciplinary alternative medicine magazine for practitioners and their communities. She is dedicated to exploring cutting-edge topics in wellness, healing, and mindfulness. Her writing covers evidence-based practices such as Somatic Experiencing (SE), clinical hypnotherapy, herbalism, aromatherapy, and Ayurveda.

Brittany's work has been featured in prominent outlets including People, BBC, Medscape, Verywell Mind, and Business Insider, showcasing her ability to engage and inform a wide audience with her expertise and passion for holistic health.

Anesha Grant is a talented poet and educator dedicated to expanding educational opportunities for underrepresented groups. She won the prestigious San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award in Poetry, which includes a $5,000 prize. 

She is the Director of Education & Alumnae Programs at Black Girls CODE, focusing on improving access to post-secondary opportunities. Previously, she was the Site Director of College Track San Francisco, supporting students' success from high school through college. Anesha also served as the Associate Director of College Admissions at SEO Scholars in New York City, helping students get into competitive colleges with financial aid.

Anesha graduated from Harvard College and holds a master's degree in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She currently works at Stanford as a Committee and Project Manager in the VPO PGP Operations department.

Alex is an educator, artist, and researcher focused on racialized working-class communities. His interdisciplinary work combines audiovisual materials like video and sound with poetry and essays, highlighting everyday creativity and solidarity.

At SF State University, Alex teaches arts-based critical literacy and ethnographic approaches to language. He helps teachers use their creativity to design inclusive curricula and recognize students' linguistic talents, aiming to combat racial and class-based biases in education.

Alex is also pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at SF State. He is working on projects about colonial language ideologies and the Armenian and Guatemalan diasporas using his family's archives. His artistic work is supported by organizations like the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford and Southern Exposure.