Emerging Voices Fellows 2008
PEN USA Center USA Would Like to Congratulate the 2008 Emerging Voices Fellows:
Libby Flores, Cassandra Love, Shanna Mahin, Davin Malasarn, Sonia Quinones, Marytza Rubio, and Jamie Wong.
Libby Flores was born in Texas and moved to Los Angeles nine years ago. She has written several one-act plays that have been produced in L.A., as well as articles for publications. Her greatest love is fiction and finds the short story an endlessly fascinating form. Her story, “For Celia” was nominated for the UCLA James Kirkwood Award. She is currently working on a collection of short stories that explore the fear that one fights against to love and be loved.
Cassandra Love grew up all over Southern California and by Jr. High had attended 7 different schools. With a mother who emigrated to L.A. from Manila, and a father from North Dakota, Cassandra finds truth in fluidity, ambiguity, and the space between spaces. The oldest child of a single father, she constantly struggles with (sex/gender/race/class) identity. Her current project is a poetry collection stemming from her childhood. Cassandra studied literature and played basketball at Yale.
Shanna Mahin is a middle-aged, high school dropout with a fierce desire to overcome what her 9th grade English teacher predicted would be “a lifetime of wasted potential.” She mourns his passing for several reasons, not the least of which is the missed opportunity to point out that in 2007 she was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and was the Eda Kriseova Creative Nonfiction Fellow at the Prague Summer Program. She is working on a memoir.
Davin Malasarn studied literature and creative writing while earning a B. S. in biochemistry from UC Davis and a Ph. D. in biology from Caltech. His short stories have been published in independent journals online and in print, and two stories were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. He is currently working on a novel about a man who tries to reconnect with his family in southern Thailand after learning that his overbearing brother has been murdered.
Sonia Quinones was born in Puerto Rico but raised in Brooklyn where she learned that rice and beans form a complete protein and that Spanglish is a valid form of communication. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Eckerd College. Her poetry has been published in The Atlantic and the Eckerd Review. She is working on her first novel tentatively titled Any Kind of Sinner, the story of a woman caught in Puerto Rico’s ill-fated struggle for independence in the 1930s.
Marytza Rubio is a fashion librarian living in Los Angeles. A Santa Ana native, she will use the Fellowship to complete Santanera, a collection of short stories exploring the vibrant and diverse Mexican cultures of her hometown.
Jamie Wong was born and raised in Albany Park, Chicago with her older sister and younger brother. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Toisan and Hoiping, China. She attended The College of the University of Chicago and earned a B.A. in East Asian Studies. After working as a paralegal and freelance writer in New Orleans for two years, she attended UCLA School of Law, where she obtained a Juris Doctorate and also met her future husband. She is currently a research attorney for the Los Angeles Superior Court. Jamie is working on a collection of poems entitled A Lesson in Chinese exploring the diverse experiences that shaped her multi-faceted identity.