Literary Arts

MFA Students

  • Abdu (Mongo) Ali

    Abdu (Mongo) Ali

    Abdu (Mongo) Ali is a musician, writer, cultural organizer, and multidisciplinary artist who works in sound, collaboration, video, and performance art. Ali sees their work as poetic inquiries of identity and often interrogates binary ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. They are in the midst of creating work that speaks to the interiority of Black (butch queen) queer life, unpacking the aesthetics of Black femininity and investigating for them, what it means to show up as one's authentic self.

    Ali has exhibited performances and work at MoMa PS1, the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Andy Warhol Museum, and The Kennedy Center. They have residencies with Red Bull Music, Pioneer Works, Surf Point Foundation, and was a visiting artist at the Brown Arts Institute. Ali was featured in Cultured Magazine's Young Artists 2020 list, was a recipient of the 2023 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize and is a 2023 USA Fellow. Ali is a Literary Arts / Cross-Disciplinary MFA Candidate at Brown University.

  • photo of Allison Arteaga Argumedo

    Allison Arteaga Argumedo

    Allison Arteaga Argumedo, born in Peru during the end of the internal conflict, writes, photographs and sequences histories of national amnesia, provincial life, and American self-mutilation. Allison recently graduated from Cornell University and is an MFA candidate in the cross-disciplinary track.

  • Andres Cordoba

    Andres Cordoba

    Andres Cordoba is a Massachusetts-born writer. He has received honors such as the Thayer Fellowship and the Patricia Kerr Ross Award, named a 2019 Breakout 8 Writer in poetry by Epiphany: A Literary Journal, named a finalist in Black Warrior Review's 2020 Poetry Contest, was a scholarship recipient and graduate of the Brooklyn Poets 2022 Mentorship program, and was named a 2023 Periplus Mentorship Fellow. Some of his work can be found in The Gandy Dancer, As it Ought to Be, Subnivean, and Epiphany: A Literary Journal. He is currently a MFA candidate in poetry at Brown University. A real self-starter, a go-getter–– a team player, if you will–– his mother refers to him as the Michael Jordan of mutual losses. 

  • photo of Jana Omar Elkhatib

    Jana Omar Elkhatib

    Jana Omar Elkhatib is a Palestinian artist and writer. She was raised between Canada and the Emirates, where she was born. Her work across performance, sound, and fiction has been supported by the Banff Centre, La Corvée Paris, 7a*11d Festival Toronto, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Canadian Art magazine among others. Elkhatib is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at Brown.

  • Hyo Jin Ha

    Hyo Jin Ha

    Hyo Jin Ha is a writer from Seoul, South Korea. She writes autofiction on the emergence of memories and distorted time. She received her BA in Writing Seminars and Film & Media Studies at Johns Hopkins and is now an MFA candidate in Fiction at Brown University. 

  • Jordan Jace

  • Nicole Klostermann

    Nicole Klostermann

    Nicole Klostermann is a writer and theater artist from Iowa. She is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Brown University. 

  • photo of Sophia Marina

    Sophia Marina

    Sophia Marina is a poet from the Rio Grande Valley. Her work engages with language as a mode of self-stabilization, building toward a poetics of interiority through de/reconstruction of linguistic elements and a melding of text with self. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in 4x4, Annotations, Variant Literature, Candela Review, Ghost City Review, and blush. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at Brown. 

  • Tiffany Mi

    Tiffany Mi

    Tiffany Mi is a Chinese-American poet interested in collective memory and the archive. Her work has appeared in Poetry NorthwestNimrodPithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She lives in Providence, where she is pursuing an MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University. 

  •  Imani Nikelle

    Imani Nikelle

    Imani Nikelle (she/her) is a poet and award-winning filmmaker from Dallas, Texas. Her poetry can be found in Lucky Jefferson, Sweet Tree Review, Changing Wxman Collective, and Wax Nine Journal.

    Her written work explores the sacred, the daily, and the many landscapes of the self.

    Imani holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Writing & Film Production from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School. She is currently earning an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

  • Lindsey Pannor

    Lindsey Pannor

    Lindsey Pannor is an artist and poet whose praxis often engages language as material. Current and forthcoming work can be found in bæst: a journal of queer forms & affects, DIAGRAM, FENCE DigitalTagvverk, 240p by 1080press and elsewhere. They are currently an MFA Candidate in Literary Arts at Brown University.

     

  • Rachelle Rahmé

    Rachelle Rahmé

    Born in Jounieh, Lebanon, Rachelle Rahmé is a Lebanese-American poet and scholar interested in collaborative liberation methodologies. Rahmé is the author of the chapbooks Count Thereof Upon the Other’s Limbs (72 Press, 2019), Puce Commodity (earthbound, 2020), and Bataille’s Eggs (blush, 2021). Her translations of the philosopher Georges Bataille's occupation poetry was published by o•blēk in 2021. She was a 2021-2022 ESB Fellow at the Poetry Project, and her poems and translations have been published in Fonograf, 3fold, fieldnotes, No No No, the tiny, hot pink, anus and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. Her interdisciplinary work has been presented by Issue Project Room, Roulette, Microscope Gallery and PS1, among others. Rahmé holds a Masters in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research. She is currently an MFA Candidate in Literary Arts at Brown University.

  • Riley Ratcliff

    Riley Ratcliff

    Riley Ratcliff (they/she) is an amateur diarist from San Antonio, Texas. Their poetry however can be found now and soon in journals such as: APARTMENT PoetryAnnuletDIAGRAMFENCEPoetry NorthwestTwo Peach, and TYPO, among others. Recurrent interests include: lifestyle poetics, writing as a friendship practice, prefigurative logic, atavistic turns of phrase, distortion, fruit-ekphrasis.

  • photo of Kate Rose

    Cathryn Rose

    Cathryn Rose is a writer and editor from Texas. She writes about illness and disability, spirituality, and environment in the South and the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Joyland and more. She is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at Brown. 

  • Sarah "Sam" Saitel

    Sarah "Sam" Saltiel

    Sarah "Sam" Saltiel is a queer nonbinary artist, writer, and ENnie-award winning game designer from New York City. They received a BA from the University of Chicago where they majored in English, Visual Arts, and Creative Writing. Her work generally deals with the body, its function as a permeable membrane between the individual and the institutions and social systems that shape their day-to-day life. She has publications in magazines such as Duende and Are We Europe, including two poetry chapbooks, a long exposure of undoing and a thesaurus for the way water returns and a tabletop roleplaying game, Passing. They're currently working on a mixed-form memoir about death anxiety as a personal, political, and philosophical phenomenon. 

  • Jackson Watson

    Jackson Watson

    Jackson Watson is a writer from Georgia. Their work swerves between embodiment and documents; some of it has been published in The Columbia Review. They like watching the falcons hatch.

  • Kathy Wu

    kathy wu (she/they) is an artist, poet, tech worker, educator, and amateur weaver. Her recent works wonder about media geology and the color blue. She is working on a chapbook about scientific nomenclatures. 

    She has given artist talks & workshops via Northeastern, RISD, and Rutgers. Her work is published via Fonograf (forthcoming), The New School, and New River Journal of Digital Literature. Currently interested in rocks, supply chains, libraries, trauma-healing, graveyards, political education, & more.