University of North Texas 
For news and events follow us on Twitter @UNTCreativeWrit & Instagram @untcreativewriting
Ashley Balcazar
Ashley Balcazar is a First-year Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow. She earned her M.A. in Linguistics and her B.A. in Integrative Studies with foci in English, Linguistics, and Sociology and a minor in French at the University of North Texas. Ashley's research in the Master's program focused on the language of sexual violence, dialectical features of African-American English, and computational solutions for textual research. She has taught in the Linguistics department at UNT as an adjunct professor. Ashley has created and authored an online column, Dallas Salsa Examiner, about salsa dancing in North Texas and has written for the Dallas Morning News as a Community Voices columnist. She has also been a contributor for the CBS Digital Arts and Entertainment section. Her academic work has been published in American Speech. She looks forward to shifting from a concentration on the scientific study of language to the creativity of the written word.
Brian Czyzyk
Brian Czyzyk is a Voertman-Ardoin Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in Poetry at UNT. He is originally from Traverse City, Michigan and received his MFA at Purdue University. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and recognized by the AWP Intro Journal Awards. You can find his writing in RHINO Poetry, Tampa Review, Gulf Coast, Passages North, POETRY Magazine, and elsewhere.
Danny Daw
Danny Daw is a Ph.D. student and Voertman-Ardoin fellow at UNT specializing in poetry. He received both his B.A. in English and MFA in Creative Writing from Brigham Young University. His poems, including haiku and senryu, have appeared or are forthcoming in Inscape, tsuri-dōrō, Trash Panda, Prune Juice, and others. Besides poetry and prose, secondary scholarly interests include film and television, music, and video games. Danny is married to the poet and writer, Alexandra Malouf.
Daniel DeVaughn
Daniel DeVaughn is a writer and educator from the Ridge and Valley region of Alabama. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Poets.org, The Adroit Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Texas University Press's Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. X: Alabama, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by the University of Oregon, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, and the Academy of American Poets. He is Poetry Editor at the American Literary Review as well as a Voertman-Ardoin Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas where he is pursuing a PhD in creative writing.
Anthony Gabriel
Anthony Gabriel received his MFA at New Mexico State University, where he was the poetry editor of the lit magazine, Puerto Del Sol. He lives in the Southwest with his wife and two sons. He is originally from the Midwest, which influences and appears often in his poetry. You can find his work in or upcoming in: The Shore, Red Rock Review, Swamp Ape Review, and Beaver Mag.
Tiffany Isaacs
Tiffany Isaacs teaches writing at the University of North Texas where she is a doctoral student. She is the fiction editor at American Literary Review. Her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Environmental Writers' Conference. Her fiction and essays appear in River Teeth, the Santa Monica Review, and World Literature Today. She received her MFA from Florida State University where she served as the assistant fiction editor at the South East Review and holds a BA in philosophy from Brown University.
Parul Kaushik
Parul Kaushik is a third year Ph.D. student in Creative Writing (Fiction). She holds an MFA from Pacific University in Oregon, and her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her stories have been published in The Georgia Review and The Masters Review: New Voices. Her work is forthcoming in journals such as the Missouri Review. Parul is a bilingual writer who grew up in India and has been living in the US for two decades. She hosts a radio show in Dallas and has three children.
Meg McManama
Meg McManama is a Ph.D. candidate in Poetry and a Voertman-Ardoin fellow at UNT. She has an MFA from Brigham Young University where she taught writing. Her work is published and forthcoming in The Pinch, Citron Review, Cimarron Review, and Western Humanities Review and she was editor-in-chief at Inscape: a Journal of Art and Literature. She loves her road bike, garden, the beach, and being with her husband and daughters. https://www.megmcmanama.com/home
Samiha Matin
Samiha Matin is a writer of literary and popular fiction, who occasionally dabbles in poetry, nonfiction, and scholarly essays. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and an MFA and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Arizona. Based in Texas, they are currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. She also goes by Sami and Sam.
Kaili Mora-Duarte
Kaili Mora-Duarte is a grad student at UNT and poet from the outskirts of Houston, Texas. He received his undergraduate from University of Houston-Downtown. He enjoys spending time outdoors, writing, listening and playing music, and finding new places to eat.
Erik Moyer
Erik Moyer is a third-year creative writing Ph.D. student and Voertman-Ardoin fellow at the University of North Texas. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and a B.S. from the University of Virginia. His work has been featured in Berkeley Poetry Review, Cola Literary Review, Euphony, Literary Imagination, and Summerset Review, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Outside of school, he enjoys songwriting, chess, and playing with his cat Xena.
John Muellner
John Muellner is a Ph.D. candidate in poetry and Voertman-Ardoin Fellow at the University of North Texas. He earned his MFA from New York University where he was a Departmental Poetry Fellow. His B.A. and M.A. come from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, where he grew up. A Pushcart nominee, his work can be read in Denver Quarterly, Emerson Review, Sixth Finch, Sonora Review, Court Green, and elsewhere.
Brad Murff
Brad Murff is a Voertman-Ardoin Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UNT. His scholarly interests include early modern drama and Romantic poetry---especially the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Brad is researching Romanticism's evolution from Shakespeare to Ashbery to rock 'n' roll, hip-hop, and beyond. His work has appeared in Apalachee Review.
Bleah Patterson
Bleah Patterson is a queer, Southern poet from Texas. Much of her work explores the contention between identity and home and has been featured or is forthcoming in various journals, including Electric Literature, Pinch, Grist, The Laurel Review, Phoebe Literature, The Rumpus, and Taco Bell Quarterly.
Gabrielle Robbins
Gabrielle Robbins is a first-year Creative Writing M.A. student and teaching fellow from Mount Pleasant, Texas. She holds an M.Ed. from the University of North Texas and has spent the past five years teaching high school English and coaching state-winning UIL ready-writers. Her focus is creative nonfiction, but she is greatly inspired by all types of writers from various genres, such as Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, and Taylor Swift. She loves stories that explore the complicated beauty of girlhood and hopes to do the same in her own work.
Sera Harris
Sera Harris is a Fiction Ph.D. student at the University of North Texas. Her work focuses on queerness, disability, and worlds that just don't work the way they should. She is currently on a speculative fiction spree, finding small stories in big, fantastic worlds.
Makenzie Stewart
Makenzie Stuart is a first year Master's student studying Creative Nonfiction. They earned their B.A. in English with a focus in creative writing from UNT, where they were the Art Editor for the North Texas Review from 2022-2024. They have a special interest in the intersection of writing, art, and film. When they're not at UNT, they are working in communications and content creation for To Write Love On Her Arms, or enjoying movies, art museums, and spending time with their loved ones.
Cheyenne LaRoque
Cheyenne LaRoque is a Creative Writing Ph.D. student and a Voertman-Ardoin fellow at UNT. Despite specializing in fiction, she has pushed her creative and scholarly boundaries by building proficiency in all genres. When she isn't busy with school, work, or writing, Cheyenne likes to spend her time playing Dungeons and Dragons or curling up with a good book. She earned her B.A. in Creative Writing and Linguistics from the University of Southern California in 2021 and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco in 2023.