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 the Starn Family in honor of their beloved mother, Iris Starn.
Two Starn Workshops will take place this spring at Emery High school in Emeryville, in coordination with 2022 Jack Hazard Fellow and Emery English teacher Molly Montgomery.
Spring 2024
Starn Fellows
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 St. Mary's College of California.
Courtney Pazin (Concord High School)
Courtney Pazin grew up on the Northern California coast. She is a writer, poet, and educator. She earned a degree in Modern Literary Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in Education from Notre Dame de Namur University. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, CA. She has been awarded the Saint Mary's College Teaching Fellowship, CGEP's Global Teacher Fellowship, and an Outstanding Thesis Award from NDNU. She has an essay forthcoming in Sonoma State University's literary magazine, Zaum.
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.
Starn Fellow Alumni
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.
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