2018 Emerging Voices Fellows & Mentors

Jubi Arriola-Headley is a first-generation American born to Bajan (Barbadian) parents in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was also raised. A VONA/Voices and Lambda Literary alumnus, Jubi lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he works as a freelance writer and nonprofit consultant. He is working on his first collection of poems, tentatively titled Demons, in which he aims to navigate the political and emotional landscape between rage and joy.

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a BA in creative writing from Arizona State University and an MFA from Butler University where he was the managing editor of Booth: A Journal. He is currently a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where he is pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing. He has been the poetry editor of Gold Line Press as well as one of the managing editors of Ricochet Editions. His work is featured on Poetry Foundation’s website and has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Los Angeles Review of Books, Superstition Review, Rhino, North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poems, Testify, was released by Red Hen Press in the spring of 2017. Douglas is mentoring Jubi Arriola-Headley.

Ron L. Dowell is a lifelong resident of the Watts and Compton areas of Los Angeles. Employed for 38 years with Los Angeles County, Ron has a unique perspective on local urban communities that, in turn, inform many of his stories. He holds two master’s degrees from California State University, Long Beach, in criminal justice and emergency services administration. Ron is working on a collection of short stories.

Tananarive Due is a screenwriter and award-winning novelist who teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA. She also teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles and for Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), and was the former Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Spelman College. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus and has been named to the Grio100 and Ebony Power 100. The American Book Award winner and NAACP Image Award recipient is the author of twelve novels and a civil rights memoir. Her short story collection, Ghost Summer, won a British Fantasy Award and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. In 2013, Due and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, co-wrote a short film, Danger Word, based on their YA zombie novel Devil’s Wake, which was nominated for Best Narrative Short at the BronzeLens and Pan African film festivals. Read her writing blog at www.tananarivedue.wordpress.com. Follow her on Twitter @tananarivedue. Tananarive is mentoring Ron L. Dowell.

Natalie Mislang Mann is an educator who holds a master of arts in humanities from San Francisco State University. Her writing has appeared in Angel City Review, The Rattling Wall, and the anthology Only Light Can do That. Natalie is currently working on a memoir based on her experiences growing up in a multi-ethnic family in the San Fernando Valley.

Angela Morales, a graduate of the University of Iowa’s nonfiction writing program, is the author of The Girls in My Town, a collection of personal essays. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays 2013, Harvard Review, The Southern Review, The Southwest Review, The Los Angeles Review, Arts and Letters, The Baltimore Review, The Pinch, Hobart, River Teeth, Under the Sun, and Puerto del Sol, and The Indianola Review. She is the winner of the River Teeth Book Prize, 2014, and has received fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell Colony. Her book is the 2017 winner of the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Currently she teaches composition and creative writing at Glendale Community College and is working on her second collection of essays. Angela is mentoring Natalie Mislang Mann.

Angela M. Sanchez is a Los Angeles native and UCLA alumna. Working at the nexus of higher education, policy, and the nonprofit sector, Angela focuses on narratives that have been typically underrepresented in children’s literature. She has written and self-published a children’s book, Scruffy and the Egg, about single parenthood and homelessness. She is currently working on her first young adult novel.

Lilliam Rivera is an award-winning writer and author of The Education of Margot Sanchez, a contemporary young adult novel available now from Simon & Schuster. The novel was nominated for a 2017 Best Fiction for Young Adults by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Named a “2017 Face to Watch” by the Los Angeles Times, Lilliam is also a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 Clarion alumni. Her work has appeared in Lenny Letter, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, to name a few. Her second young adult novel, Dealing In Dreams, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in March 2019. Lilliam lives in Los Angeles. Lilliam is mentoring Angela M. Sanchez.

Francisco Uribe is a writer from Long Beach, California. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and English from UCLA. His fiction has been published in Crab Orchard Review, Zona de Carga/Loading Zone, Verdad Magazine, and Westwind. Francisco works for a nonprofit organization where he mentors at-risk youth, and is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Michael Jaime-Becerra is from El Monte, California. He is the author of This Time Tomorrow, a novel awarded an International Latino Book Award, and Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, a story collection that received the California Book Award for a First Work of Fiction. His essays have been featured in the Los Angeles Times and on Zócalo Public Square and KCRW, while more recent work is in ZYZZYVA, Black Clock, and LAtitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas. Michael is mentoring Francisco Uribe.