Contributors

2017-2019

Katherine Allred graduated with an AS from Salt Lake Community College and a BS from the University of Utah. She currently lives in Salt Lake City and works professionally as a proposal manager. She is on the board of Lightscatter Press and spends her time occupied with activism, knitting, gardening, and writing personal nonfiction, memoir, and poetry.

2018-2019

Sabita (she/her) is a Graduate student in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah. She is invested in foregrounding underrepresented voice and is involved in research in Decolonial and Postcolonial rhetoric and multilingual writing. Sabita is also an activist and has worked with immigrant and refugee community members in the Greater Salt Lake area. 

Lisa Bickmore (she/her) is recently retired from the English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies Department at Salt Lake Community College. A working poet, her work has focused on multimodality, genre, poetics, and writing within public settings. She is the founder and publisher of the new nonprofit literary Lightscatter Press

Chris Blankenship (he/him) is the Director of Learning Outcomes Assessment at Salt Lake Community College and a faculty member in the English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies Department. He writes about assessment, academic labor, and writing program administration. An uprooted Tennessean, he constantly searches Utah for his next hit of BBQ, greens, and sweet tea. 

Anne Canavan (she/her) is an associate professor of English at Salt Lake Community College. A generalist, her scholarship focuses on second language learning, community college pedagogy, and narratology. As a displaced southerner, she is still looking for sweet tea here in Utah. 

2017-2019

Joanne Castillo (she/her/hers) hails from Honolulu and Los Angeles, but she remains in Salt Lake Valley where she actively participates in the local Filipino community. Currently a freelance editor, writing consultant, and now working with the Utah Board of Education, she hopes to continue punching proverbial water buffalo wherever possible.

2017-2019

Dr. Charissa Che (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor at Queensborough Community College (CUNY). Her scholarship centers on cultural rhetorics, translingualism, and second language writing. She thinks fondly of her time in SLC, and the smart, funny, and generous people she met at the University of Utah and SLCC. Also, the street cats in NYC just don’t compare.​

2015-2019

Nic Contreras is a Latin American immigrant living in the United States. Hailing from Mar del Plata, Argentina, he and his family emigrated during the early 2000’s during the Bush administration. He grew up in Anaheim, California and Salt Lake City, Utah – plus many more places in-between. In 2015, he graduated with an associate’s degree from Salt Lake Community College before transferring to the University of Utah and completing a bachelor’s degree in Writing & Rhetoric Studies in 2018. A man who has worn many hats in this lifetime, he currently daylights as a program manager for the non-profit First Star Academy in their U of U chapter.

 After 21 long years as undocumented citizens in the U.S., he and his family stand at the precipice of documentation and future citizenship.

2016-2019

Kelly Corbray was raised in the Pacific Northwest, and found her way to the university of Utah via multiple job, school and career moves. After taking a meta-analytical approach to her movement, Ms. Corbray came to an understanding about education, equity and inclusion that changed her trajectory in school and career. Ms. Corbray is currently a K-12 reading intervention teacher in New Orleans. She works to reach students early in their educational careers to help facilitate more inclusive and equitable educational practices so that marginalized children recognize and seize every opportunity they are presented with in their lives… and become trailblazers that can create for themselves whatever paths they take in life towards future career or higher education.

2015-2016

Shauna is the Technology and Digital Equity Manager at the Salt Lake City Public Library. She leads the Library’s digital equity initiative and works with library staff and community partners to create long-term programming in the communities the Library’s eight locations serve. 

2018-2019

Dr. Nina Feng (she/they) is the Coordinator of Equitable and Inclusive Pedagogy at the University of Utah’s Center for Teaching Excellence. She received her doctorate in Writing and Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah, and she is a graduate of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her research centers on anti-racist language practices and pedagogy, along with game-based learning and queer methodologies.

Romeo García is a faculty member in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah. His scholarship focuses on settler colonial histories in Texas and Utah. García’s research appears in College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, The Writing Center Journal, and the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric Series.

2017-2018

Clint Gardner (he/him/his) is the Director of Student Writing and Reading Centers at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has served in various leadership roles in the writing center and two-year college communities over the past 30 years.

While being involved with this life-altering project, Cassandra Goff (she/her/hers) was working on her Writing & Rhetoric bachelor’s degree as a first-generation transfer student. She has since earned her master’s degree and spends her time continuing the ecology by teaching various writing classes at both the University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College. 

Jay Jordan (he/him/his) is a faculty member in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah. His scholarship focuses on second language writing, international education, WAC/WID, and rhetorical theory. North Carolina born and raised, he still feels new to the Intermountain West after 15+ years.

2015-2019

Nathan Lacy (he/him/his) received his BS in Writing and Rhetoric Studies and his MA in English in the time between when this project started and when the book came out. He continues to work as an adjunct instructor at Salt Lake Community College and the University of Utah, and does instructional design.

Andrea Malouf (she/her) is a Professor of English, Linguistics and Writing Studies at Salt Lake Community College, previous Director of the SLCC Community Writing Center, and facilitator for the SLCC Center for Authentic Leadership and Mindfulness, as well as a trained college conflict resolution mediator. She has an MA in Literature and a BA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis, both from the University of Utah. Prior to SLCC, Andrea worked as a professional writer and corporate executive.

2018-2019

Dr. Bernice Olivas teaches writing and rhetoric at Salt Lake City Community College. She is a First-Generation, Indigenous Mexican American scholar who began her academic career as a high school dropout with a G.ED. In 2007, Bernice joined the McNair Scholars Program. In 2010, she completed her B.A. in English from Boise State University with a creative writing emphasis and continued to complete her MA (2012) in the teaching of English and her PhD (2016) in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

2018-2020

Nkenna Onwuzuruoha (she/her/hers) moved to Salt Lake over ten years ago to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA for the SLCC Community Writing Center. She has taught first-year writing at Salt Lake Community College, Westminster College, and the University of Utah. Nkenna is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies.

2015-2019

Westin Jay Porter (he/him/his) is a Salt Laker by way of Mormon settlers and Italian railroad workers. A first-generation college student, Westin fell in love with and continues to work with Salt Lake communities since he began at the SLCC Community Writing Center as an SLCC student. Westin enjoys beer, fishing, and complaining about academia.

2015-2019

Born in California, Sandra is a first-generation college graduate from the University of Utah – in Writing and Rhetoric. The best department EVER. Sandra has welcomed the opportunity to work for Salt Lake County in the office of Regional Development. This opportunity ties in with her youth advocacy with Volunteers of America and recent work with Head Start as a family advocate. She resides on the west side of Salt Lake City and lives with her favorite sister and houses 4 cocktiels Luna & Soleil – Biggy & Ziggy.

2017-2019

Born in Mexico, Claudia is a first generation college graduate who has enjoyed working with unhoused youth at a shelter and at-risk youth in a wilderness therapy setting. You’ll often find her on trails with her dogs Piglet and Luna or buying random things she didn’t need at estate sales. 

2015-2022

Christie Toth (she/her) is an associate professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah. Her scholarship focuses on composition, two-year colleges, and the dream of postsecondary writing instruction that enacts the democratic potential of open admissions. For her, writing this book has been a transformative game of Words with Friends. She’d like to try it again when she’s not on the tenure clock.  

Dr. N.S. ‘Ilaheva Tua’one (she/her) received her PhD. in British and American Literature from the University of Utah in 2020. She is the new Assistant Professor of Indigenous/Native American Studies in the Women’s and Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

2015-2018

Justin G. Whitney (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor of Languages, Literature and Philosophy at Tennessee State University. His work focuses on writing pedagogy, the intersections of culture and writing knowledge transfer and Technical/Professional Writing.