We are pleased to announce that Gabino Iglesias has joined our Core Faculty. Gabino previously served as a Visiting Professor in the program, starting in 2022, as well as serving as part of our Residency Guest Faculty in 2020.
"Gabino is the perfect model for what we teach our students," program director Tod Goldberg said. "Here's a writer who has found acclaim across several genres. Horror, mystery, crime, fantasy, literary fiction. Novels. Stories. Story collections. Essays. A little bit of everything. And of course he's also one of our nation's preeminent book critics. Gabino is the consummate professional writer and we're thrilled he's joining us for the long-term."
Gabino Iglesias is the award-winning author of House of Bone & Rain, which was a finalist for the Locus, Bram Stoker, and Goodreads Choice awards for best horror fiction, and garnered rave reviews from the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Boston Globe, among countless others. His previous book, The Devil Takes You Home, won the Shirley Jackson Prize, Bram Stoker, and International Latino Book Award for horror fiction, and was a finalist for the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Locus Award and several more. His other work includes Coyote Songs and Zero Saints, both of which garnered major awards and effusive reviews and have been released in all-new editions this year. In addition, his short fiction appears regularly in top literary magazines and anthologies and has been selected for Best American Mystery & Suspense Stories. Gabino is also one of our top literary critics, penning the horror column in the New York Times Book Review, the crime column in CrimeReads, and regularly reviewing for NPR, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and more. He holds a PhD from the University of Texas and an MA and BA from the University of Puerto Rico and lives in Austin, TX.
Founded in 2008, the Low Residency MFA @ UC Riverside is the premier low residency MFA program in the nation and Movie Maker Magazine's #1 ranked low residency screenwriting program. Based out of UCR's Palm Desert Center, the Low Residency MFA offers majors in fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, and screenwriting, and minors in each, as well as poetry. Our next application deadline is February 1st, 2026 for our Spring 2026 cohort. For information, please contact us at palmdesertmfa@ucr.edu.