We're pleased to announce that Ivy Pochoda has joined our Core Faculty. Professor Pochoda has served as a Visiting Professor since 2022 and prior to that was a regular part of our guest residency faculty, serving in that role periodically starting in 2011. 

"Ivy is one of the very best writers in the country," program director Tod Goldberg said. "And what she's shown us in the Low Residency MFA at UCR is that she's also one of the premier teachers of writing. Her dedication and empathy to and for her students was apparent immediately. Her influence on their work has been profound and lasting. As a colleague, she's been a rock since day one. We couldn't ask for a better addition to our team." 

Ivy Pochoda is the best-selling and award-winning author of Sing Her Down, These Women, Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and The Art of Disappearing, which have won or been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edgar Award, and the Strand Critics Award, among many others. In addition, under the name Ivy Claire, she authored the best-selling Epoca series with Kobe Bryant. Her nonfiction and criticism has appeared widely, including in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Alta. She holds a BA in Classics from Harvard and an MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College.  Her next novel, Ecstasy, will be released this June.

Founded in 2008, the Low Residency MFA @ UC Riverside is the premier Low Residency MFA program in the nation and the #1 ranked low residency screenwriting program (Movie Maker Magazine). Housed in the Palm Desert Center, the Low Residency MFA offers majors in fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, and screenwriting, and minors in each, as well as poetry.