Fiction Staff

Timoteo Montoya II (Lipan Apache, Scottish, French, Spanish) is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas and a second year fiction student in the Creative Writing MFA Program at The Institute of American Indian Art. He is a writer of Indigenous Futurisms and Speculative Fiction, and is currently working on his first Indigenous Futurisms epic - The I’xos Trilogy. He received his BFA in Cultural Anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2013 with a focus on Indigenous food systems. He has published a short story in Into The Unknown Together, A New Mexico climate fiction anthology and a chapter on Indigenous Futurisms in A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework (2023), published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Thomas Dayzie is a fiction writer working on his first novel. He earned his undergraduate at Princeton University with a concentration in English and certificates in Creative Writing and Humanistic Studies. His interests include media theory, Hebrew literature, Diné thought, and Indigenous futurism. He lives in Berlin and is a first-year MFA student in Creative Writing at IAIA

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a non-fiction history of a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute for American Indian Arts' MFA Program. This fall his poetry will be published in Huizache. His other book reviews are at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Charter House's blog, IAIA's journal, and Los Angeles Review.

Hunter Wienke is a writer and student affairs professional who lives in Bloomington, Indiana. He is Anishinaabe, a descendant of the Gakiiwe’onaning Ojibwe in Northern Michigan. He received his B.A. in English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and is currently working on an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Kenneth Dyer-Redner is a member of the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of Fallon, Nevada. He received his BA from the University of Nevada, Reno and his MS in American Indian Studies from Arizona State University. Presently, he lives in Southern California with his wife and kids, where he is a lecturer in the CSU system. He is a first-year student in the MFA program at IAIA.

Nonfiction Staff

Melissa Coyle Meinzer earned a BA in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004 and has been working in journalism ever since. She's pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at IAIA in order to hone her craft and learn to tell stories in a more artistic and less deadline-driven manner. She currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri.

Tanya Tyler (she/her) is Diné from Tséʼałnáoztʼiʼí, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. She graduated with honors from the University of New Mexico with a Bachelor of Arts and double majored in English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has been published in Conceptions Southwest and Yellow Medicine Review. She is a first-year student in the MFA program in Creative Nonfiction at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Poetry Staff

Chris Hoshnic is a Navajo Poet and Filmmaker. A recipient of the 2023 Indigenous Prize Poet for Hayden’s Ferry Review and Poetry Northwest James Welch Finalist, Hoshnic is also an advocate and speaker of Diné Bizaad, or the Navajo Language, and has translated work for Thousand Languages Project, a Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing initiative. His fellowships include the Native American Media Alliance’s Writers Seminar, UC-Berkeley Arts Research Center Poetry & the Senses, and Diné Artisan and Authors Capacity Building Institute. Hoshnic’s work has received support from Indigenous Nations Poets, CoLang, Tin House, and many more.

Oona Narváez is a Mexican American/Indigenous writer from El Paso, TX. After earning a BA in English American Literature, she is now pursuing an MFA in Poetry at IAIA.

Bonney Hartley’s poetry has been featured in exhibits at Bard College, Mead Museum, and Albany Institute of History and Art, published in Celebrate North Berkshires (Tupelo Press and Williamstown Rural Lands), Stonecoast Review, and Writing the Land, with work forthcoming in The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press). A 2024 Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, Bonney is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and an IAIA MFA candidate. She lives in Mohican homelands in Massachusetts.

Geneva Toland is a writer, farmer, naturalist, and educator currently working towards her MFA in Poetry at the Institute for American Indian Arts. Her writing has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Camas, humana obscura, and West Trade Review, among others. She feels humbled to live in the juniper and piñon pine foothills of the La Plata mountains, homelands of the Ute, Diné and Puebloan peoples.

Storyteller’s Blog Editor

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a non-fiction history of a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute for American Indian Arts' MFA Program. This fall his poetry will be published in Huizache. His other book reviews are at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Charter House's blog, IAIA's journal, and Los Angeles Review.

Social Media Manager

Graphics/Art Editor

Bhavna Mehta works with paper, thread, and words to tell stories about longing and relating that combine figurative and landscape imagery with botanical motifs, text, and shadows. She is a Gujarati immigrant from India and lives on unceded Kumeyaay land in San Diego. Bhavna has exhibited widely in San Diego and Southern California. From time to time, she teaches in the papermaking studios at Penland and Women’s Studio Workshop. Writing about her work will appear in the Journal of Modern Craft in Fall 2024. She is currently a MFA student in the Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM.

Editor-In-Chief

Claire E. Wilcox is originally from Minnesota, but the first time she saw mountains, she knew she wouldn’t stay there long. She has been living and writing in the Albuquerque area for 15 years. She’s worn many professional hats as a psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and academic. She is currently pursuing an MFA at IAIA for fiction, and she also writes non-fiction. Her creative work has been featured in the Santa Fe Reporter, Psychology Today, Across the Margin, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Your Tango, El Portal, and Fiction on the Web, among others.