Fiction, memoir, poetry, playwriting—the Otis College of Art and Design MFA Writing Class of 2020 and 2021 read their work.

Geneva Arystan is a Kazakh native living in Los Angeles. She graduated with an art criticism BA degree from Central Saint Martins in 2019 and is an MFA candidate in the Writing Program at Otis College of Art and Design. She previously worked as Deputy Arts Editor for The Royist magazine in London and was named the Spotlight Author of the Year of Vox Populi literary magazine in 2015. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection titled Three People Ago.

Jenna Dorian received her MFA in Creative Writing from Otis College of Art and Design in 2020 where she served as an editor at Otis Books. She self-published her first novella, You Holy Screaming Symphony, in 2016. She is a member of The Porch Writers’ Collective, was a writer-in-residence at Rivendell Writers’ Colony and was a Los Angeles Review of Books/USC Publishing Workshop Fellow in 2019. Her work has appeared in PERJUS Magazine, Dime Show Review, Make Change, Hippocampus Magazine, and Pub Lab, an annual journal of the Los Angeles Review of Books/USC Publishing Workshop. Jenna is currently a freelance writer, content editor at Society6, and film/TV writer's assistant in Los Angeles.

Alexi Gehring is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Otis College of Art and Design. This will be Gehring’s second Masters. She earned her MFA in the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) as well as her BFA in Photography/Media. She worked at Cal Arts for six years with the School of Film/Video. Before her move to the West coast, Gehring worked in publishing with Vogue magazine. Gehring is currently in the process of writing a memoir.

A 2020 graduate of the Otis MFA Writing Program, Sarah Haufrect's work has appeared in Salon, Psychology Today, the Berkeley Poetry Review and Documentary Magazine, among others. She has spent the past ten years working for a private philanthropist based here in L.A. and recently joined the Board of Directors for NAMI: WLA, the Westside Los Angeles chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She holds a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley. Go Bears.

Hannah Martin is a fiction writer living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at Otis College of Art and Design and has been published in SOVO// Magazine.

Faizah Ahmad Rajput has a BA in English Creative Writing from California State University San Bernardino and her MFA in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design. When Faizah isn't working on her first book or website, Badbride.Com, she is working in aviation transportation at Hollywood Burbank Airport, which allows her to feel as though she has one foot dipped in adventure all the time. She can be found at @ForFaizah on Instagram or Badbride.Com. Say hi!

Chenfan Tao is a playwright from Shanghai, China. Wanted to be a bird. Incumbent moon dreamer. Concern for what had happened and what’s happening.

Annabelle Vincent is a poet and nonfiction writer from Toronto, Canada. She received her BA
in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and her MFA in Creative Writing from Otis College of Art and Design.

Dan White is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Otis College in Los Angeles and is currently a Fellow at Stony Brook University's BookEnds program, at work on his first novel. He serves as the Fiction Editor for the West Trade Review literary journal, where he also contributes essays and reviews, and has nonfiction forthcoming in the Chicago Review of Books. His short fiction has been published in Tulane Review and Trouvaille Review. A Chicago ex-pat, he has lived in Long Beach, California for seven years, where he works as a tutor and frequents the beach to hide from writer’s block.

Julia Zellie is a short story writer currently completing her MFA in creative writing at Otis College. She has also earned a bachelor’s and a master's degree in history. In her previous life, she was a delicate rare stone who washed ashore. Now she resides in Venice, CA. with her fiancé and cat.

Skylit: Otis MFA Group Reading