I wanted to create a sense of urgency that can only be captured when the poem feels like its on the verge of insanity. When I wrote this piece, I was encapsulated in the idea of routine, the balance between longing and taking, and the hunger that comes with girlhood. My poem seeks to capture this balance. My artistic process went somewhat like this: I first started with a brainstorm, letting myself free write all over a blank document. I then went through many different drafts trying to capture the authenticity of the original words. I read and re-read the poem, I made both mundane and major edits, and at the end of it all I can honestly say that I put myself wholly in this piece.

I wrote this piece as a reflection of my life growing up in the Bay Area and its cities. Anytime I step foot outside or on MUNI or BART, I feel a connection to my surroundings in a very observational way. To me, my writing reflects those notices with details and comparisons that I often find myself thinking about when going anywhere. While I wrote, I noticed that I started to stray from strict non-fiction and give a bit more glamor and magic to urban living, but it is definitely still a representation of my urban experience. My favorite thing about living in a metropolitan mania, a double meaning in the title, is how everything connects: the streets you walk on to the trains you take, the ground under your feet to the sky over your head. This web manifested itself in my piece and I'm very glad to be able to share my appreciation through writing.

Memories fascinate me. How we trust them, how they can be manipulated, and how something so fragile defines who we are. In this story, set in a nation where both the government and the Resistance use mind manipulation without the citizenry’s awareness, Ethan, the Resistance leader, seeks to convince his wife, Vivienne, who’s still under the government’s influence, to join him in the fight. The original story is a crucial part of a larger plot I’m developing. After reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s A Temporary Matter, I returned to the piece, fleshing out Vivienne and her relationship to Ethan as I questioned how a character would deal with having her memories altered day after day without her awareness. I wanted to explore what manipulation does to not just individuals but also their relationships, and the price a person is willing to pay for what they believe in.

This poem follows the story of a young boy who decides to talk to the sickly old woman in his neighborhood and learns her story. I think that more awareness on the topics that are discussed in this piece needs to be spread, especially awareness towards elderly people who experienced this earlier in life.

This short collection of poems depicts two of the things that I and many others struggle with out of the many aspects of mental health: body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation. Although there is so much more to my story, these are two things that I battle day to day and I wanted to share my experience. The first piece is aimed to tackle in intricate detail what it feels like to not know how you actually look, and the constant anxiety and body checking to try to decipher it and how others perceive you. The second piece describes the thoughts that ran through my head constantly when my suicidal ideation was at its worst. I am proud of both of these pieces, the vulnerability is especially new to me since I am usually a private person. I hope that through this collection whoever reads this can really feel the emotions encapsulated in it.

My writing piece is a short creative essay on being a woman and talks about personal experience and has different perspectives.

This was a very personal and complicated piece for me to write. My mother comes from a very small town in Ireland, where generations of my family are from due to the lack of resources required to move elsewhere. Whenever I visit I have this guilt that hangs over me, because I have so much more opportunity than any of my cousins who were raised in that town. I wrote this poem from the perspective of one of my cousins to highlight the feeling of worthlessness that is perpetuated by the town's community. Since I am lucky enough to have supportive parents that consistently do what's best for their kids, it's easy for me to forget that not everyone is as privileged as I am. Writing this poem helped me connect with my roots in a way I never expected. What really became clear to me when writing this poem is that the set of circumstances in which a person is born into is not their fault. While we may judge some people for drinking at an early age, or maturing too quickly, it's important to understand that these things aren't the fault of the person, but the fault of circumstance. The title of this piece, Éalú ó Bhiorra, means "Escape from Birr" in Irish Gaelic. It was important to me to preserve pieces of my culture in this poem, so I included bits of Irish customs in it as well.

Born in Beijing, I came to the United States when I was three years old and have continued to feel a sense of longing and kinhood with the city I left behind and the invisible ways in which it has shaped me. "Confession to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics" is a meditation on just that, the conflicting emotions that come with loving your birth town while living in a home so far away, especially given the hostile Chinese American relationship. I thought the Olympics captured this sense of competition and unease yet global reconciliation well. The motifs of fire and ice illustrate my passion and affection versus the situations I am faced with, the "thin ice" on which I stand and "skate." I also like the connotations to global warming and the end of the world (like "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost), further signifying the frenzy and experience of living in a complicated world. The decision of spacing aims to illustrate a transcending of the typical narrative/story I am telling of my immigration and more personally portray my affection for Beijing—how it transcends borders, time, and reason. The taking off of the leotard at the end is also a symbol of removing all the external conditions and loving Beijing fully and purely. While writing this piece, I find myself reading it out loud over and over again to ensure it sounds like a confession from me; a genuine verbal letter to the city that will never leave me.

This was my final project for my screenwriting class last year. The prompt was "Untranslatable Words." The word 'flâneur' is a French word that, although now used as Parisian slang for loiterer, began as a word that meant "one who walks to enjoy walking." The story, although it's hard to see from the short five pages submitted, is about a man named Rob Auclair who's only joy in life is walking. Since this is the first five pages, you do not see much more than the exposition, but eventually Rob becomes paralyzed in a tragic accident while walking and drives himself mad, to the brink of suicide, trying to find a surgical solution to his legs or a virtual solution so he can walk again in his mind. I was listening to a lot of French music and jazz while writing this, hence the song titles to accompany the montages. This is one of my favorite works I've ever done and I hope you enjoy. *Please note, although this is set in Paris, the dialogue has been "translated" to English for A. writing simplicity, as English is my first language and B. reading simplicity

I was inspired to write this piece while my mom was dying my hair. She was telling me about how she used to dye her friend's hair in New York, and how she missed the friends that died. I told her I wanted to write a poem about her, and she strarted telling me as many details as possible. I spent a few weeks working at it, fixing it, and trying to make it as realistic as possible. Her reaction was the best part of writing it. I'm happy with the result of the piece, and am so excitied to submit it!

This creative nonfiction piece is a tribute to my late grandfather, who instilled in me the values of kindness, humility, and, above all, resilience. While my piece compares the before and after, I aimed to focus most on the idea of lifelong love—how unexpected life events brought us closer together. One of my fondest memories was searching for and taking photos of various flora together in China or at nearby parks, so I include metaphorical imagery of constellations, mountain ranges, and other scenes in nature to describe our unbreakable relationship. The symbolism of paradise birds, a type of flower referred to at the beginning and end of the poem, brings the narration full circle. Ultimately, to me, writing is a method for catharsis and introspection. As a second-generation Chinese American living thousands of miles away from her parents’ hometowns, I have had a tumultuous relationship with writing. While writing this piece, I tried to not only let go of my own insecurities but also interweave them into the paragraphs to leave a deeply personal message. The story attempts to capture several intense feelings: my initial apprehension toward what lies in the future, the stage of acceptance associated with grief, and the pure joy that comes with familial love. Pursuing creative nonfiction has challenged me creatively and technically, and I look forward to continuing to develop my voice.

My film takes place in my homeland, the Bay Area and has to do with comedic elements I've drawn from my everyday life. The scene is set in Oakland, California, where an upcoming Muslim-American rapper struggles to balance his faith with the provocative nature of his song lyrics. I have always taken an interest in telling unconventional stories that challenge the dominant narrative. As a third-generation Iranian-American, many of my films tackle identity, environmental, and social topics in unique ways. From a salamander loving environmental film with elements of Fight Club to a film about a Bay Area rapper who struggles to balance his Muslim faith with the provocative nature of his music, I have always tried to cover global issues by adding an unexpected spin.

I wrote this piece as a reflection of two intertwined works: on Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” (hence the title) and Hèlene Cisoux's concept of "écriture feminine”—yet it's not a direct application of her theories of free-flow feminine writing because I did partially stick to the "rules" of poetry. However, despite the poem's lines in strict 10 syllable counts, there's an uneven number of lines—17— hopefully bringing some sense of disruption to poetry's formalities. The second line's "abstract" was originally "Rembrandt," but I wanted ensure that there was less of a reliance on male artists within my poem. While I briefly considered replacing his name with that of a female artist, I chose against that because it would undermine the message of the poem as a whole.

Summer's End is a creative flash fiction piece depicting the emotions and memories that the transition from summer to autumn evokes. I aimed to touch on themes including coming of age, time, purpose, and youth. I explored different flash nonfiction pieces in my school's Creative Writing elective, and was inspired to experiment with unique writing styles.

"Marinara & Alfredo: How Do Rainbows Work?" represents the fusion of my love for science, passion for writing, and aspiration to inspire young children, particularly girls, to cultivate an interest in science. I authored this book to teach the science of light and rainbows through storytelling and charming characters, tailored to resonate with a 5-year-old's understanding. Much of my free time is devoted to sharing this book in pre-K and kindergarten classrooms across the Bay Area, where I relish the chance to influence young minds. Additionally, I am in the process of having the book translated into various languages. My ambition is to expand "Marinara & Alfredo" into a series, with each book introducing a different scientific concept in a manner that engages and sparks the imagination of children throughout the United States, and perhaps around the world.

The objective of this poetry collection is to illustrate the struggles and humor of the relationship between an elder sister and a younger brother. Interwoven with memories of the times I spent with my sibling, these three poems describe how we both came to understand each other despite our large age gap. To me, his presence has been a reminder to laugh through times of sorrow and a shoulder to cry on. When my family immigrated to another country, watching him grow gave me a sense of comfort as we both struggled to adapt to our new environment. He enchanted me with his curiosity and ability to look with awe at seemingly ordinary objects. Although we both still see the world in different ways, he helped me rediscover my internal sense of wonder. My brother made me realize through his example that no matter where we both live, we will always have each other to depend on. His restless smile was the inspiration for my poetry collection, Musings of Sisterhood. Through these poems, I aspire to capture the concoction of emotions in a brother-sister relationship as I narrate the story of overcoming our differences amidst difficult circumstances that only served to strengthen our bond.

I wrote this story as a dedication to my Grandpa who grew up with a difficult childhood, yet never failed to live his life to the fullest despite the original lack of love he received due to being put up for adoption and placed in the wrong hands at a young age. I've always admired his dedication to his family which he built from the ground up, never allowing them to settle for less, for he knew exactly what less felt like. His childhood led him to be a uniquely lovable man, which I hope to illustrate in this piece.

My writing largely centers around things I have struggled with in my life. I find it easier to work through things by writing them out. Husks is about my own experiences with burnout and how I have changed since childhood. It centers around fire, specifically wildfires, with each section titled as a phase of a wildfire, and signifying a phase of my life. Through this poem I attempt to display the desperation to go back to the way I had been, and acknowledge the fact I cannot go back to the person I used to be. The three sections each show how I have worked through the change from childhood to near-adulthood. They highlight the ways I have come to accept the parts of myself that simply won’t relight, no matter how strongly I wish they would. Each word in Husks was carefully chosen to best display the mess of anger, grief, nostalgia, and hurt going through my mind. It is a testament to the most vulnerable and complicated parts of my heart.

My submission is a letter written by a young woman living out in the costal country, to an ex lover who has left her suddenly and moved to the city. The letter is the speaker's mourning of the relationship. I love driving out by Bolinas and through the more rural areas of California and as I drive I always like to imagine the lives of the people who live in the old houses and what the world looks like to them. This is I suppose one of the stories I made up.

I wrote these poems about the relationships I've had with my close family members. Some are purely just letters of love to the people I'm closest with and explore the strengths of our bonds, while others focus more on the complexity and tougher emotions of family. I wrote the first poem in the collection first because the feelings expressed in the poem were something that I was struggling with at the moment, and the poem was a way to express these emotions. The other two poems that follow were written purely because I wanted to continue to express the complexities of family and love. My main process while writing is just to put pen to paper and see where it takes me.