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Creative Writing Department College of Fine Arts

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Emmy Pérez
Chair
Creative Writing Department
ELABS 125
Email: emmy.perez@utrgv.edu
Phone: (956) 665-3252
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Faculty (click on the picture for bio)

Emmy Pérez, Chair

Professor
Phone: (956) 665-3435
Email: emmy.perez@utrgv.edu
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Emmy Pérez, Chair

 

Emmy Pérez, USA fellow 2022 and Texas Poet Laureate 2020, is the author of the poetry collections With the River on Our Face and Solstice. A collection of her new and selected poetry is forthcoming from TCU Press.

Pérez is a recipient of a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has also received the Modesta Avila Award, the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, and the James D. Phelan Award.

Her work appears in anthologies such as Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press), Other Musics: New Latina Poetry (University of Oklahoma Press), A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press), among others. Her poetry also appears on the Poetry Foundation online, Split this Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, and the Poem-A-Day series with the Academy of American Poets.

Pérez is a graduate of Columbia University (MFA) and the University of Southern California (BA). She has taught in Texas borderland institutions since the year 2000. Over the years, she has also led community-based creative writing projects and taught poetry writing in juvenile and adult detention centers. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop for socially engaged writers, and in 2020 she was named a member of the Texas Institute for Letters. In 2021, she served as Consulting Artist-in-Residence with UT San Antonio’s Democratizing Racial Justice Project as a subawardee of their Mellon Foundation grant.

She is a full professor of creative writing at UTRGV and teaches MFA and undergraduate creative writing courses. In 2016, she was awarded a Faculty Excellence Award in Student Mentoring, and in 2012, a UT Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. She is an affiliate faculty member in Mexican American Studies and holds the Dr. Robert S. Nelsen Professorship in Mexican American Studies, 2021-2024. She also serves as Chair of the Department of Creative Writing.

Photo Credit: Paul Chouy

Curriculum Vitae


Professor
Creative Writing
Email: emmy.perez@utrgv.edu
ELABS 206
Phone: (956) 665-3435

Steven P. Schneider

Professor
Phone: (956) 665-8775
Email: steven.schneider@utrgv.edu
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Steven P. Schneider

Steven P. Schneider, Poet, Critic and Professor of Creative Writing, is an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters. As department Chair of English from 2001 to 2007 at the University of Texas Pan-American, Professor Schneider led the creation of a new MFA program in Creative Writing, now housed in the Creative Writing Department at UTRGV. Professor Schneider has pioneered the teaching of culturally relevant literature at UTRGV and through his NEA Big Read grants developed innovative community literacy programming. He is invited frequently to lead teacher workshops in Region One school districts.

Steven is the co-creator with his artist wife Reefka of two bilingual, ecphrastic exhibits and books: Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives / Fronteras: dibujando las vidas fronterizas and The Magic of Mariachi / La Magia del Mariachi. He is also the author of the poetry collections Unexpected Guests and Prairie Air Show. His poetry has been featured in numerous anthologies and published in such journals as Critical Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, The Literary Review, and in the syndicated column and website American Life in Poetry as well as on NPR Morning Edition. His scholarly books on contemporary American poetry include A.R. Ammons and the Poetics of Widening Scope and two edited collections of essays entitled The Contemporary Narrative Poem: Critical Crosscurrents and Complexities of Motion: The Long Poems of A.R. Ammons. In 2018 he traveled to Hengyang Normal University in Hunan Province, China for the opening of the exhibit The Magic of Mariachi. Steven’s poems were translated into Mandarin for this show and his work has also been translated into Spanish, Hebrew, and Japanese. His awards include five Big Read grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Nebraska Arts Council Fellowship, and a Poetry Fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico.

He has directed many MA and MFA theses and his former students include – Octavio Quintanilla, José Antonio Rodríguez, Katie Hoerth, and Esteban Rodriguez – all of whom have gone to receive major recognition and awards for their published books.

Curriculum Vitae


Professor
Creative Writing
Email: steven.schneider@utrgv.edu
ELABS 326
Phone: (956) 665-8775

Eric Miles Williamson

Professor
Phone: (956) 665-3400
Email: eric.williamson@utrgv.edu
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Eric Miles Williamson

Eric Miles Williamson is author of four books of fiction and 3 books of criticism/nonfiction. He edits American Book Review, Texas Review, and Boulevard. He teaches literature and fiction at UTRGV.

Curriculum Vitae


Professor
Creative Writing
Email: eric.williamson@utrgv.edu
ETROX W208
Phone: (956) 665-3400

Jean Braithwaite

Associate Professor
Phone: (956) 665-3252
Email: jean.braithwaite@utrgv.edu
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Jean Braithwaite

Jean Braithwaite is a specialist in nonfiction writing, with particular interests in memoir, essays, science writing, and documentaries. Every subject is fascinating if you go into it deeply enough! Other important interests include graphic literature (aka comics) and science fiction (which really ought to be called philosophy fiction).

Curriculum Vitae


Associate Professor
Creative Writing
Email: jean.braithwaite@utrgv.edu
ELABS 217
Phone: (956) 665-3252

Britt Haraway

Associate Professor
Phone: (956) 665-3335
Email: britt.haraway@utrgv.edu
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Britt Haraway

Britt Haraway is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His stories have appeared in the South Dakota Review, Natural Bridge, 971, Product, New Madrid, Great Weather for Media, Moon City Review, and BorderSenses. His poetry has also appeared in BorderSenses. His collection of stories has been accepted by Lamar University Literary Press.

He is the fiction editor for riverSedge magazine and is the faculty adviser for Gallery, UTRGV’s student literary arts magazine. He received a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and was raised in the Memphis area.

Curriculum Vitae


Associate Professor
Creative Writing
Email: britt.haraway@utrgv.edu
ELABS 273
Phone: (956) 665-3335

José A. Rodríguez

Associate Professor
Phone: (956) 665-3335
Email: jose.rodriguez@utrgv.edu
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José A. Rodríguez

José Antonio Rodríguez, poet, memoirist, and translator, is the author of the poetry collections This American Autopsy, cited in the New York Times as “new & noteworthy;” Backlit Hour, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; and The Shallow End of Sleep, winner of the Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters; and the memoir House Built on Ashes, a finalist for the PEN America Los Angeles Literary Award, the International Latino Book Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. He also translated the poems of Steven Schneider into Spanish for the collaborative book Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives. His work has appeared in numerous venues, including The New Yorker, The Missouri Review, Pleaides, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets website, among others. A Mexican immigrant and first-gen college graduate, he holds a PhD in English from Binghamton University and is associate professor at The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.

Photo Credit: Mark Roemisch

Curriculum Vitae


Associate Professor
Creative Writing
Email: jose.rodriguez@utrgv.edu
ELABS 272
Phone: (956) 665-3335

Robert P. Moreira

Lecturer III
Phone: (956) 665-8771
Email: robert.moreira@utrgv.edu
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Robert P. Moreira

Robert Paul Moreira, Lecturer III at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Pan American, and his Ph.D. in English from The University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the recipient of the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award (2011) and two awards for short fiction from the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers (2009, 2010). His books include ¡ARRIBA BASEBALL!: A COLLECTION OF LATIN@ BASEBALL FICTION (2013) and SCORES (2015), winner of the 2016 NACCS Tejas FOCO Fiction Award. Most recently, his hybrid collection, DIG, made the longlists for the 2020 PANK Big Book Contest and the 2020 Diverse Voices Prize from Dzanc Books. DIG will be published by Frayed Edge Press in Fall 2022.

As a dramatist, Robert's plays include MIRIAM’S SONG, PROXIMA b, THE VARIANT, and KIKI, a children's play commissioned by Enrique Camarena Elementary School in Mission, Texas. His play ROSES FROM CASTILE was selected by Milagro Theater as part of their inaugural INGENIO Play Reading Series in Portland, Oregon in 2018. DICK TEA, a monologue, was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Stage It! 10-Minute Plays Competition. MALINALLI, a musical in collaboration with composer Josiah Esquivel, will be published by FlowerSong Press in 2022. DRAMA IN THE TIME OF COVID: 50 PLAYS OF LOVE, LOSS AND HOPE, co-edited with Philip Zwerling, will also be published by FlowerSong Press in 2022.

Robert’s creative and research interests include contemporary fiction, playwriting and musical theater, Latinx and Multiethnic Literatures, and Sports Studies.

Curriculum Vitae


Lecturer III
Creative Writing
Email: robert.moreira@utrgv.edu
ELABS 205
Phone: (956) 665-8771

Affiliated Faculty

David Carren

Professor
Phone: (956) 665-2634
Email: david.carren@utrgv.edu
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David Carren

David Bennett Carren has directed, written or produced more than 200 films and television shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Stargate, SG1.

His recognition as a screenwriter includes a Writer’s Guild Award Nomination, a First Place in the New York Television and Film Festival, Grand Prizes in the Cynosure and StoryPro Awards, and Platinum, Gold and Bronze Remi Awards. As a director, he earned a Silver Palm at the Mexico Film Festival for his feature film, The Red Queen.

His full-length play, Hunter’s Moon, was a semi-finalist in the 2014 Eugene O'Neil National Playwright's Conference and his one act play, The End of Infinity, was a finalist in the Scribbler Theatre 2015 Play Competition. His one act Christmas, was performed at the Back Alley Theater in Los Angeles while another play, Comments, won South Texas College’s Ninth Annual Play Writing Contest. He has also produced and directed for the stage, including productions of Wait Until Dark and The Nerd.

His screenwriting textbook, Next Level Screenwriting, which he wrote with Professor David Landau, is available through Focal Press.

Medallion Books published David’s first novel, No Power on Earth, Stonelock Pictures optioned his second novel, I've Killed Mother, and his short story If She Dies was published in Twisted Tales before David adapted it as an episode of The New Twilight Zone.

David earned his Bachelor in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and his Master in Fine Arts at Spalding University. He is a full Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley where he has served as a chair of the Department of Theatre in the College of Fine Arts. He teaches scriptwriting, film history, and field production.

Website: UTRGV Faculty

Website: International Movie Data Base

Curriculum Vitae


Professor
Department of Theatre
Email: david.carren@utrgv.edu
ELABS 148
Phone: (956) 665-2634
Phone Alt: (956) 665-3252

Elvia Ardalani

Professor
Phone: (956) 665-3443
Email: elvia.ardalani@utrgv.edu
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Elvia Ardalani

Dr. Elvia Ardalan, Associate Professor, is the author of the following poetry collections: Y comerás del pan sentado junto al fuego (Claves Latinoamericanas, 2002), De cruz y media Luna/From Cross and Crescent Moon (Claves Latinoamericanas, 2006) Miércoles de Ceniza (Migual Angel Porrúa, 2007), Cuadernos para un huérfano (Claves Latinoamericanas, 2012), Callejón Kashaní (Imaginarium Literario, 2013) and El ser de los enseres/The Being of the Household Beings (Libros Medio Siglo, 2014). She has published in Isla Negra, Perito, Sinalefa and Puentes, among other venues. She co-edited in 2011 the book Miguel Hernández desde América for the Miguel Hernández Foundation in Oriuela, Spain. In the field of translation she has translated Rumi, Omar Khayam, and Hafez into Spanish. She has been nominated for the Jose Fuentes Mares Award and the International Carlos Pellicer Poetry Award. She graduated from Texas A&I University with a doctoral degree in the field of Bilingualism and Language Acquisition.

Curriculum Vitae


Professor
Writing and Language Studies
Email: elvia.ardalani@utrgv.edu
ELABS 315
Phone: (956) 665-3443

David Bowles

Associate Professor
Phone: 956-665-3427
Email: david.bowles01@utrgv.edu
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David Bowles

David Bowles is a Mexican-American author and educator from south Texas. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, he has written several titles, most significantly the Pura Belpré Honor Book The Smoking Mirror. Additionally, his work has been published in venues including Rattle, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Metamorphoses, Translation Review, the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Huizache, Axolotl, Concho River Review, Eye to the Telescope, Asymptote and BorderSenses.
Associate Professor
Department of Literatures and Cultural Studies
Email: david.bowles01@utrgv.edu
ELABS 229
Phone: 956-665-3427
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