Graduate Students

Graduate Students

Current Graduate Students

	Amanda Alfonso (Screenwriting) formed her filmic consciousness as a lonely teen, borrowing screwball comedy movies at the library and watching TCM marathons to keep the blues away. While she aims to experiment more with genre and style, she primarily writes dark comedies about people living on the periphery and their attempts to articulate their relationships, identities, and desires within that space. When not creating characters, she’s probably listening to her favorite song on repeat (“Bad Decisions” by The Strokes) or watching something she will equally love and scoff at (French films). She received her BFA in Motion Pictures and Television from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
	Noah Amir Arjomand (Screenwriting) is an Iranian-American filmmaker and author. His first (co-directed, co-produced) feature-length documentary, Eat Your Catfish, is about his mother’s last years with the motor-neuron disease ALS. The film premiered in 2021 at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam and won Best Documentary at Istanbul Film Festival. Cambridge University Press published Noah’s first book, Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria, in 2022. Fixing Stories explores the worlds of the “fixers” who act as brokers between foreign reporters and local sources from behind the scenes. He has also written about politics, culture, and media in Middle East and Central Asia for Dissent, Public Culture, Tehran Bureau, The Afghanistan Analysts Network, Profil, American Anthropologist, The New Arab, and others. Noah earned a PhD in sociology from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University. Before coming to Riverside, Noah lived in Bloomington, Indiana, where he taught at Indiana University. He likes cats and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
	Ava Fojtik (Playwriting) is a writer and actress from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She is a co-founder of AKA Productions alongside Aaron Higareda and Karly Thomas. Ava's comedy plays have been produced at Augsburg University and the Minnesota Fringe Festival. In addition to teaching Acting at Camp Highlander, Ava has worked with Puppets a la Carte as well as the Gluck Foundation to give kids in the Inland Empire opportunities to learn puppetry. Ava's recent film and theater scripts follow girls and women who subvert societal expectations, whether that be through artistic, domestic, or violent means. Besides theater, Ava is passionate about thrifting, reading, and eating raspberries.
	Paul Ingoldsby (Screenwriting) was born and raised in Wicklow, Ireland. He studied at University College Dublin and University of Toronto, earning a First Class BA in English and Film in 2018. He has worked in script development and as a talent agency reader. When not reading or writing, he enjoys hiking, playing football (“soccer,” if you must), and baking the perfect loaf of soda bread.
	Ruth Madrid is a playwright and screenwriter living in Riverside, California. Originally from Maywood, CA, Ruth focuses on uplifting relevant and unique stories from her community by rooting them on untouched corners of Latinx identities and experiences. Ruth steers away from digestible mainstream Latinx stories to tell more unconventional stories about her community through theater and film. During her time in UCR as an undergraduate, Ruth has staged various plays with UCR Latinx Play Project, an on-campus Latinx Theater Organization. Such plays included "El Recalentado" (2018), "Inolvidable" (2019), and excerpts from "Madres de Latinoamérica" (2020). Ruth has also written short plays for theaters in Los Angeles such as "Una Hora Mas" (2018) and "La Tormenta de Ayer" (2019). Ruth has also written and directed short films including "Hourglass" (2023) and "The Clean Up" (2023). Ruth is currently researching and writing an original feature film about the IE garage rock community.
	H.M. Minger Urquilla (Playwriting) is a Salvadoran from Los Angeles. In addition to playwriting she dabbles in poetry, directing, and the occasional acting role. She holds a B.A. in English with a Theatre minor from CSULA, where she served as poetry editor on their student magazine, STATEMENT. While her work is largely rooted in Magical Realism, she hopes to explore as many genres as she can get her hands on.
	Allison Moon (Playwriting) is a sex educator and the author of five books including the instant classic sex-ed guide Girl Sex 101. Inspired by her education work, Moon writes screenplays, stage plays, and teleplays that explore the complexities of human sexuality, identity and desire, particularly when interfacing with technology. She has a degree in Neuroscience and Theatre from Oberlin College. Read her work at alliedmoon.com
	Carlina Perna -they/them- (Screenwriting) can usually be found questioning some element of social structure. Carlina writes about impact and refusal, using written and visual language to construct realities that critique and affirm. They hold a BA in Spanish Literary Studies and Religious Studies from Occidental College and an MS in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
	Trinity Thompson (Screenwriting) is a writer, educator, and organizer who proudly hails from Honolulu. She grew up witnessing the power of storytelling as a tool for individual exploration and collective liberation. Whether in her writing or organizing, Trinity loves creating worlds of BIPOC belonging and transcendence. She most enjoys experimental and genre-bending forms of art and is particularly interested in exploring the complex and seemingly contradictory aspects of identity in her writing. A graduate of Stanford University, Trinity studied creative writing, ethnic studies, and sociology. She also completed UCLA's Professional Program in Television Writing and has written for and about her community as an Oakland Voices correspondent. She identifies as a film lover, pop culture fiend, ice cream aficionado, and too competitive for her own good.
	Kali Veach (Screenwriting) is a writer and director interested in absurd connections, tragicomic consequences, queer perspectives, and the ways in which organizations and individuals interface with emerging technologies. After receiving her BA in Creative Writing from UCR, she taught English as a Second Language before transitioning to film production. Upon returning to UCR, she was selected as the writer-director for the fall 2021 Gluck Film Ensemble Fellowship. Her fiction, poetry, and scripts have been published in Mosaic, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. As a child she moved cross-country several times, between St. Louis, Baltimore, and Huntington Beach, but now lives in Los Angeles with her wife. She is in various stages of development and production on several projects.