Iris Starn Workshops & Fellowship
Starn Fellows are current MFA candidates in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Starn Workshops are subsidized by New Literary Project in partnership with the Starn Family in honor of their beloved mother, Iris Starn.
In Spring and Summer of 2026, six Starn Workshops will take place. Meet our 2026 Starn Fellows who will teach these workshops below.
Spring 2026
Iris Starn Fellows
Damneet Kaur
Damneet Kaur, also known as D. Kaur is a poet, educator, and operations-minded dreamer. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California, where her work explores inheritance, language, girlhood, and the quiet architectures of love.
A first-generation Punjabi Sikh woman, Damneet writes toward community — toward the kitchen tables, wedding halls, front yards, and classrooms that shape us. Her poems and essays ask what it means to stay, to witness, and to imagine beyond what we were handed.
Outside of writing, she is drawn to long conversations, ancestral histories, the politics of memory, documentaries that unravel empires, and the small miracles of plants and everyday rituals. Whether hosting workshops or building systems that support others, she is committed to creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and held.
Lucas Maas (Hope Solutions)
Lucas Maas is a father, husband, and United States Marine Corps veteran. He is both an MFA candidate and adjunct instructor at Saint Mary’s College of California. He has been awarded the Iris Starn Teaching Fellowship and is currently working on his debut memoir, a chronicle of his experience in Marine Corps Recruit Training and his search for home. His work can be found in As You Were: The Military Review, Voices, Pornstar Martini, and more. He resides in the Bay Area with his family.
Ana Tuazon
Ana Tuazon is a writer and educator based in Oakland, California. She is currently working towards an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Saint Mary’s College, where she is also a Composition Teaching Fellow. Previously, she earned an MA in Art History from Stony Brook University and was a part-time instructor at Parsons School of Design in New York. Her writing on art, culture and social movements has been featured in a number of outlets including Frieze and n+1’s Track Changes.
Anne Williston
Anne Williston grew up near Chicago, Illinois, and spent most of her adult years in Michigan, where she and her husband raised their five children. She has worked as a school librarian, completed her Secondary Teaching Certification in 2003 (Olivet College, Olivet MI) and her Master of Education in Alternative Education in 2008 (LockHaven University of PA). She worked for 17 years as the English teacher for a small alternative school in Michigan and continues to teach high school English online. Anne is currently reinventing herself by leaving the Midwest behind to pursue a MFA in Creative Writing (‘27) at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Anne Williston aspires to write non-fiction that grapples with issues such as school and gun violence; neurodivergence, trauma and abuse in marriage and family life; issues regarding grief and how to process it; and anti-Christian doctrines, such as Christian nationalism and spiritual abuse.
Rose Wong
Rose Wong is a Chinese writer from Hong Kong and Vancouver, Canada and an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California. Her fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Cordella Magazine, and Pile Press. Her substack, tick tick bitch, examines what it means to be at once coming of age and dying, a project Wong started after being diagnosed with metastatic cancer.
Rayjon Briscoe Young
Rayjon Briscoe Young is a student, visual artist, civil servant, educator, and writer. After graduating with a degree in Digital Media Studies with a Creative Writing Minor & Certificate from the University at Buffalo in New York, he does Media Marketing for the City of Oakland. Growing up in Oakland, California and Brooklyn, New York, heavily informs his worldview when crafting a story. Rayjon’s writing is consistent with horror framed within socio-political commentaries, magical and techno-realism, afrofuturism, fantasy, and bizarre science fiction. Because of that, genre-bending stories are his forte. He is currently an MFA candidate and teaching fellow at Saint Mary’s College of California and a recipient of the Iris Starn Fellowship.
Starn Fellow Alumni
Camila Elizabet Aguirre Aguilar (Emery High)
Camila Elizabet Aguirre Aguilar is a Xicana warrior, educator, student, and poet. Born in Sacramento, and raised in San Diego, she has performed and workshopped spoken word poetry and storytelling with underserved youth for over fifteen years. After graduating with a degree in Sociology from UC Berkeley, Camila taught poetry throughout the Bay area for Bay Area Creative, a local nonprofit organization. In her own work, she explores power, politics, family incarceration, addiction, mental illness, intergenerational trauma, sexism, settler colonialism, and racism. Camila is currently a first-year graduate student and fellow in the MFA Creative Writing program at Saint Mary's College of California.
Carly Blackwell (Emery High)
Born in San Diego and raised in Florida, Carly Blackwell holds an MFA from Saint Mary's College of California where she specialized in fiction. For her first year and a half, she served as a teaching fellow, creating her own freshman English course in the fall of 2022. Some of her work has appeared in the online literary journal Write Now Lit—most recently, her short story “I Shouldn’t Have Smiled at Him.” She is currently working on a young adult novel and short story horror collection. She was a 2023 Starn Fellow.
Isa Maloof (LPS, Hayward)
Isa Maloof is a poet, teacher, and mother. She holds an MA in Theological Studies from Harvard University and is currently an MFA candidate and Teaching Fellow at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Genay Markham (East Bay School of Performing Arts)
Genay Markham is a passionate leader, writer, and advocate with over 20 years of experience in leadership development, youth empowerment, and social justice. With a strong background in community engagement, policy advocacy, and program development, she has successfully designed and led initiatives that empower young people and mobilize communities for systemic change.
She has held key roles at organizations such as RYSE Youth Center and Urban Habitat, where she developed leadership institutes, managed advocacy campaigns, and facilitated programs centered on political education and civic engagement. Genay has extensive experience mentoring young writers from diverse backgrounds, having worked as a writing tutor, leadership coach, and public speaking mentor. She has taught writing structure, persuasive techniques, and storytelling to middle and high school students, young professionals, and aspiring civic leaders.
Beyond her community work, Genay is a dedicated writer with a passion for creative nonfiction, playwrighting and poetry. She seeks to merge her advocacy experience with her love for writing, using narrative as a tool for social impact. With a strong commitment to equity, empowerment, and innovation, she continues to foster leadership, amplify marginalized voices, and create lasting change through both activism and storytelling.
Courtney Pazin (Concord High School)
Courtney Pazin grew up on the Northern California coast. She is a writer, poet, and educator. She earned a BA in Modern Literary Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in Education from Notre Dame de Namur University. In May, she will receive a dual MFA in the genres of CNF and Poetry. She was awarded the Iris Starn Fellowship (2023-2024), Saint Mary's College Teaching Fellowship, CGEP's Global Teacher Fellowship, and an Outstanding Thesis Award from NDNU. Her prose and poetry are anchored in place—usually coastal—and study the relationship between bodies, love, and grief. Her work is featured in issue 28 of ZAUM, The New Overland Review, and the upcoming Black Bird Books anthology.
Allie Silvas (Hayward High School)
Allie Silvas is a book artist and storyteller from Southern California. She is currently an MFA candidate in fiction writing at Saint Mary’s College and a recipient of the Iris Starn Fellowship.
Curious to
hear more?
Sign up to stay up to date with New Literary Project.
We promise to keep your information private.