Monique Adams

Monique Hafen Adams is an actor, teacher, and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her acting credits include work at many Bay Area regional theatres, such as ACT, Theatreworks, and more. She’s also had the joy of voicing video game characters with 2K Games and has recorded a few Tonies Toys. Having come to writing later in life, she is now a resident writer with Playground SF and Dorktales Storytime Podcast. Her full-length play, On Blackwell's Island, was named a Finalist for Bay Area Playwrights Foundation for the 2025-26 Season. She is continually inspired and encouraged by her children and husband.

Lucas Bermudez

Lucas Bermudez is a former marionette puppet who yearned to be a real boy, but tragically did not conceptualize mortality before making his wish. As such, he now lives in fear and writes existential horror and children’s adventure (separately) from his self-imposed hermitage in the San Fernando Valley. He spent several years as a reality TV producer before realizing he had, in a sense, become the vile puppeteer. He enjoys hosting murder mysteries with his wife and collecting shiny things, he can’t whistle, and his favorite color is purple.

Jessi Cook

Jessi Cook is a mother to five amazing children, a military wife, an Air Force Veteran, a former National Security Agency (NSA) Intelligence Analyst, and an all-around creative. She was raised in the rural town of Horseshoe Bend, Idaho, where she developed a love of literature at a very young age. Her primary writing focus is screenplays and children’s books, though she also writes music, poetry, and short stories. When she isn’t writing, playing with her kids, or spending time with her husband, she can be found cooking homemade bread from her sourdough starter (named “Breadgar Allen Dough”), puttering in her garden, or, of course, reading.

Jessi holds a Master of Science in Intelligence Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Intelligence Studies with a concentration in Intelligence Collection. She was awarded an Air Force Commendation Medal for her role in hostage rescues and is an alumnus of The Writer’s Guild Foundation Veteran’s Writing Project. She is currently working to publish her debut children’s book.

Jessi believes being creative is a gift and responsibility from God. She advocates that creativity nurtures spiritual, emotional, and mental health, and that art is the key to reducing school violence and addressing the national youth mental health crisis.

Alex Fonseca

Alex is an educator and writer based in Palm Springs, CA. While she has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember, she loves reading and writing non-fiction. Alex spends most of her time teaching eleventh graders all about English. When she isn’t writing or teaching, she enjoys touring breweries, painting, or admiring local art with her two dogs.

Jacob Granados

Jacob is a Los Angeles-based fiction writer. A first-generation graduate student, he has earned his Bachelor's degree in English Creative Writing from CSULB and continues to spread the joy of literature to low-income intermediate school students in Los Angeles. Working as a teacher's assistant and social media influencer, he hopes to spread positivity and happiness with his stories and unique life experiences. He has previously published in the J.A. Books Magazine and aims to be a published author and University Professor.

Charlie Green

Charlie owns restaurants in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. Before that he sold medical supplies and software to fund his fiction writing addiction—screenplays and novels. Originally from the east coast, Charlie was an English Literature major at Swarthmore College, where he also captained the baseball team. He’s part of the Orange Theory cult, plays tennis, body surfs, travels, and enjoys the usual cultural and artistic Attractions. 

J.D. Horn

Jack Douglas Horn, writing as J.D. Horn, is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Witching Savannah series, the Witches of New Orleans trilogy, and the Southern Gothic horror stand-alone Shivaree. His novels have been translated into multiple languages. He is currently at work on a Palm Springs–set mystery series featuring Detective Simon Beck, a gay officer navigating both the LGBT and law enforcement communities. Jack also has an MBA in international business and formerly held a career as a financial analyst before turning his talent to crafting chilling stories and unforgettable characters. Originally from Tennessee, he currently lives in California with his spouse, Rich, and their rescue Chihuahua, Kirby Seamus.

Krishna “Krash” Jackson

Krash is a Navy veteran who dreamed of writing professionally since she was a teen. She also wanted to see the world, so she joined the Navy as an interior communication electrician with the hopes of eventually becoming a Navy journalist. She achieved her goal, which allowed her to see more of the world in ways she hadn’t imagined but happily put into words through blogs, articles, captions and her memoir. She also served as a combat photographer deploying to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Africa and Bahrain documenting various missions including NATO peace keeping forces, counter-piracy operations and explosive ordnance teams. She recently left federal service as a Navy public affairs officer to pursue her dream of writing full time. Once she finishes her memoir she plans to dive into finishing the many Sci-fi stories she started years ago.

Romero Nickell

Romero Nickell lives in Los Angeles and holds a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Davis. After high school Nickell pivoted from athlete to coach and recently accepted the position of head coach for JV boys basketball at his Alma Mater, Eagle Rock High School, in northeast Los Angeles.

He spent two weeks this summer at a coaching seminar in Italy and was eating tortellini in truffle cream sauce in Florence when he found out he was accepted to the UCR low residency MFA. He believes that there is an interplay between anthropology, basketball, and fiction writing and is optimistic that the low residency MFA at UCR will help him capture it in writing. In his free time he enjoys drinking espresso and playing Catan with his friends.

Gayle Ott

A multi-specialty Registered Nurse, Gayle was born in Africa and now hails as a proud American. A medical professional for over 25 years, she’s done everything from critical care to midwifery. Her primary focus for over a decade was patient safety through performance improvement, data analysis and education. She’s led peer review committees, ghostwritten for physician leadership, and her investigative work was cited by the Deputy Attorney General in a Medical Board case review. A writer from a young age, Gayle has embarked on her life-long dream of becoming a screenwriter and, having lived in three countries, brings a wealth of diverse, multicultural life experience to the table. She's routinely dragged along by an imagination run amok, and creating worlds filled with complex, imperfect heroes and irreverent characters, is the stuff of delight. Gayle lives on eight acres in the Northern California Sierra Nevada foothills, and professionally herds cats at the private sanctuary she and her husband built and own.

Jamie Park

Once a scientist at a pharmaceutical company in New York, Jamie Park is a Korean-American filmmaker, translator, and a singer/songwriter hobbyist now based in South Korea. Also a wife and a mom of two, Jamie holds a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Zack Preston

Zack Preston is a multi-medium dude. Drama and writing, saxophone and photography are his/their trifecta. He has performed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Public and Oregon Children's Theatre, among many others over thirty plus years as an actor. He has also opened for Merle Haggard, The Neville Brothers and David Crosby, and done countless commercials and short films. Zack has taught performing arts to kids of all ages and is excited to sculpt his storytelling bones here at UCR, with the help of this all-star crew of entertainment juggernauts.

Diego Puma

Diego Puma is an up-and-coming screenwriter hailing from the Inland Empire. With an intense passion for storytelling, and as a devoted animator, Diego strives to create captivating characters and storylines. He has a soft spot for Science Fiction and, beloved most of all, robots! With a current focus on screenwriting, Diego hopes to enter the industry and help create the next generation of animated projects, for all ages and all demographics.

Daniela Ryan

One of the best things about theatre is that there is always something to learn. Since 7 Daniela has been involved in several theatre productions a year, often as performer, sometimes as producer, in recent years also as director. Never once has it been boring – or easy. She has also had the opportunity to work in broadcasting at KPBS, to work in independent film in Hollywood, and to raise a couple of smart accomplished children. In fact, her daughter also starts at UCR this year in the School of Public Policy, and if she becomes President someday, Daniela fully intends to take credit. While raising said children, she started working as a bookkeeper and worked her way up to Finance Manager in several small businesses. Starting out as a child in theatre proved a difficult and winding road, but her motto then as now has always been “Is it gonna be difficult? I’m in."

George “Geordie” Stock

Geordie is a writer with nearly two decades of production experience in the video game industry, during which he contributed to projects at LucasArts, Activision, and NCSoft. A lifelong Californian, he studied at the University of California at Santa Barbara and San Francisco State University with academic focuses in English literature, film studies, and music performance. He is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing to develop his craft in blending the fantastical motifs of magic realism–adjacent genre storytelling with the unforgiving emotional intensity of grounded, character-driven narratives. Some of his most significant influences include Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Cormac McCarthy, Charlie Kaufman, Park Chan-wook, Guillermo del Toro, and Quentin Tarantino.

When he's not writing—or fine-tuning a story outline spreadsheet—Geordie is most likely in a movie theater, reading a novel from his voluminous backlog, dreaming of his next trip to Anfield, or tweaking his crème brûlée recipe. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives with his longtime romantic companion, Karl the Fog.