Alumni Connection
Who are we?
Alumni Connection was created by creative writing undergrads Clare, Chimera, Gabriela, and Professor Micah Perks with the support of the UCSC Humanities Division Explore Program to celebrate our alumni and connect them to our current undergrads.
What happened next?
Alum, tell us about your career since leaving UCSC. Be inspired by what your fellow alumni are achieving in the arts, teaching, healthcare, sled dog racing, and more!
Student Resources
Current undergrad? Get advice, positivity, and support from graduates who’ve been where you are.
Give back
The Creative Writing Program needs you! Partner with us to mentor a current student, help support or fund the Living Writer’s Series or a student fellowship.
What is the What Happened Next Project?
For years, the Creative Writing Senior Projects were housed in the Kresge Writing Center, but when Kresge began their remodel, we received an email that we needed to empty out the writing center within a week! The projects were loaded into boxes then stacked up in Micah Perks’ office. Later, with the support of the Humanities Division and the Literature Department, the senior projects found a home in the Lit Department Library, on the third floor of the Humanities building, where they are all now alphabetized and on permanent display.
In addition to arranging the 800 physical projects, we developed a poll, sent it out to alum, and wrote the first creative writing newsletter! An alumni Living Writers was also organized, in which every student in a creative writing class chose a senior project to read and then conducted a digital search for the author.
Ways to Give
UCSC Creative Writers want YOUR help!
We want your help to sustain creative writing and make change. With your assistance, we will enrich the college experience of current UCSC creative writing students!
Could your organization use a little more help?
Are you wanting to support the professional growth of creative writing students?
Well, look no further! There are so many students in the program hoping for experience working in a professional setting. Send in any internship opportunities for creative writing interns to find a dedicated student.
-
Alumni Connection Newsletter 2025
Dear Creative Writing Alum,
Welcome to our first creative writing program newsletter!
In this letter you’ll find information about Our What Happened Next Project that aims to celebrate you and connect you to our current undergraduates, updates on the creative writing program and faculty, as well as ways you can support the program and its students.
Creative Writing Undergrad Interns: Chimera, Clare, and Gabriela
The What Happened Next Project started with the massive remodel of Kresge College two years ago, which was the location of The Writing Center that housed our senior project archive: hundreds of your senior projects dating back to the 1970’s.
Because the whole building was being demolished, we had to remove all the creative writing senior projects. Your projects ended up stacked in boxes in Micah’s office.What happened next?
We began with an Alumni Living Writers Series in Winter, 2024, Return of the Beloved, where we brought back alums like debut novelists Chiara Barzini and Rebecca Rukeyser, poet Sarah Ghazal Ali, and comic book creator Sina Grace, as well as graduate student alums and former professors Peter Gizzi (now at UMass Amherst) and Nate Mackey (now at Duke).
We also initiated The What Happened Next Project, to start to connect to and celebrate you, our alums. At a Living Writers evening we spread 200 of your senior projects around the room and every student taking creative writing chose one of your projects from the boxes, read it, then tried to find and interview you. Some of you were found, some not, but the students loved reading and writing about your projects.
Then, in Fall, 2024, Micah Perks received a Humanities Division Explore grant to hire three undergraduate interns to continue working on our What Happened Next Project.
Clare, Chimera and Gabriela, our undergraduate interns, spent the fall archiving your projects into the new Literature Library. Since then, we sent you a poll, designed a website and now this newsletter.
Ultimately, the goal of What Happened Next? is to create a space where we can celebrate your accomplishments, you can share advice for undergrads, and we can create community with our UCSC writers past and present.Creative Writing Program Updates
The Creative Writing program is probably mostly as you remember it. We still do the Living Writers series every year, bringing amazing writers to the Humanities Lecture Hall. Here’s a great article about the program Serious Word Play.
Students still apply every quarter to join the concentration. Graduating seniors still read their work at a year-end celebration and receive roses from their teachers. Creative Writing interns host the series and help create community in the program.
Probably the biggest change is that we now have a graduate concentration! The Creative/Critical concentration within the Literature PhD just finished its tenth year. Our grads teach the intermediate classes and TA for the intro classes. And they are amazing, you can check them out here.
UCSC Creative Writing Graduate Students
Alum Updates
We are excited to celebrate all you have accomplished as well as honor the challenges you have faced. Alumni have gone on to become journalists, sled dog trainers, media and marketing writers, filmmakers, teachers, bloggers, stay-at-home parents, documentarians, photographers, drag queens, PhD candidates, and more.
Last fall we sent out a Google Form (which you can still fill out!) to ask all of you: after you graduated, what happened next?
We discovered that for many of you a passion for reading and writing has remained at the center of your lives. Some of you found a career in writing, whether through creative writing, journalism, marketing, technical writing, or writing way too many emails.
Here’s what your fellow alumni have to say:
“Since graduation, I have worked in publishing in New York, as a freelance journalist for several years, and in nonprofit fundraising for way too many years. I wrote a few screenplays and a fair amount of poetry in the last decade. Currently, I am writing a novel. I really appreciate this Creative Writing alumni project; I think it’s incredibly valuable for young writers to have access to voices ‘from the future.’” – Casey Burchby
What brings meaning and joy to your life?
“People’s stories. Every one of us has a unique, essential, and meaningful story or hidden coffer of stories, which, when we tell them, helps us to contextualize our relationships with each other–our collective human experience. Right now, our stories hold immense power. If we can share them in such a way, I truly believe we can connect with otherwise resistant or opposing perspectives, which is critical right now.”
Anything else you’d like to tell us?
“Participating in the program was one of the most valuable experiences of my life. I had an incredible mentor, created lasting friendships, and learned so much. I was told that I wouldn’t be able to make a living choosing this concentration, and I don’t mean to be petty, but it feels incredible proving the naysayers wrong.”
Faculty Updates
Gary Young was feted with a retirement party this winter including speeches and former students zooming in, and a lovely reading of Gary’s poetry. Everyone thanked Gary for his support of the many students he mentored throughout his twenty years in the Creative Writing Program. After a short break, he will return part-time to continue his Directorship of the Cowell Press.
Karen Tei Yamashita retired from UCSC in 2019. Since then she’s published Sansei and Sensibility, a book of Jane Austen inspired stories, Dark Soil, which includes stories of the hidden history of Santa Cruz, won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Foundation, and given countless talks around the world.
Micah Perks is just stepping down from a half-time position as Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, and just finished teaching a two hundred person lower division Children’s Literature class that she absolutely loved. Some of the books she taught included alum Reyna Grande’s memoir for middle-schoolers, The Distance Between Us and alum Jessica Love’s often banned picture book Julian is a Mermaid. Micah’s last book was True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape, a short story collection. She’s going on sabbatical this year and will be at the TAKT artist residency in Berlin in the fall to work on a new book project about loons (yes, the birds).
Ronaldo Wilson is currently directing the Creative Writing Program. He continues to write, dance, and make art at a ferocious pace. Here’s his website to view some of his newest projects.
Melissa Sanders-Self has been incredibly busy teaching Kresge CORE, Porter CORE and Advanced Creative Writing classes. She continues to be an inspirational teacher and mentor. Students particularly love her pedagogical innovations like guided meditation, and appreciate her warmth and kindness. She also continues to be an obsessive Jeopardy watcher!
Jennifer Tseng is our new(ish) hire and wants you to know she misses her past students. Her two biggest pieces of literary news are her book, Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive, poems made with her late father’s English letters, was published in April, 2024 by UMass Press and her essay collection, Mixed Feelings, will be published by Jackleg Press in 2026. This past winter she was lucky enough to curate Living Writers featuring the theme, “Grief Sequence,” a phrase borrowed from the title of poet Prageeta Sharma’s most recent book.
How Can You Connect?
Please check out the What Happened Next page “Alumni Connection” on our website, dedicated to you.
Creative Writing alums interested in establishing an undergraduate paid internship can reach out to our Assistant Director of Experiential Learning, Kylie Rachwalski, at krachwal@ucsc.edu or initiate the process with this form. The Humanities team is currently seeking to partner with alums to develop internships during the academic year and summer, specifically in Los Angeles or the Bay Area. Internship opportunities can include brief job shadowing, supporting a specific project, or holding a 6-8 month position with a detailed job description. UCSC will provide funding for students working at eligible organizations. Learn more about mentoring today’s students!
And it’s not too late to fill out our Google Form so we can find out what happened next for you, what advice you might have for current students, internships or informational interviews you might want to offer and more.
And please, if you’re able give to the Creative Writing Programs so we can continue to bring amazing writers, fund fellowships for students and more.
Email us at cwalums@ucsc.edu to sign up to receive future newsletters.
