UCR Palm Desert l Home

Salt Heart is a feature length screenplay. It is a Gothic horror story about love, desire, betrayal, madness, remorse, sorrow, transformation, death and, ultimately, choices.

2008-2009

Aja Henriquez
Thesis Title: Adult Toys
Committee: Stuart Krieger (Chair), Tod Goldberg, Mary Yukari Waters

Description: Adult Toys is a television pilot about Carolina, a young woman who is learning to grown up by playing with her toys. The problem is the toys have aged to adulthood just like their girl, and they've got life challenges of their own. Carolina has to face living alone, romantic relationship problems, being a better friend, getting older, and getting her family to accept her as an adult while maintaining the friendships she started with her toys more than twenty years ago. It's a lot to juggle. Carolina "Cookie" Vasquez is able to pull it off without much grace but with plenty of laughs.

Jack Henry
Thesis Title: des poemes et des chansons d'amour d'heroine
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Chair), Juan Felipe Herrera (Co-chair), Matthew Zapruder

Description: From the dirty streets and harrowing back alleys of los angeles to long flat stretches of unbearable desert heat comes Jack Henry's l'héroïne des chansons d'amour. a collection of poetry written with blood, heart and soul, this collection looks through the lense of a haggard life and reveals beauty from the dust, dirt and devils waiting at every corner. over a hundred pages of madness, jack henry's l'héroïne des chansons d'amour is a screaming voice from the underground.
Publications: with the Patience of Monuments; full-length collection of poetry, neoPoiesis Press 2009

Jessica Huettner
Thesis Title: Nathan's Mile
Committee: Stu Krieger (Chair), Rickerby Hinds, Charles Evered

Description:An absentee father struggles for sobriety in order to keep his children from the system

Chris Millan
Thesis Title: Intersection
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair), Dick Hebdige (Co-chair), Mary Yukari-Waters
Description: A collection of interconnected stories about soldiers returning from the War in Iraq.
Teaching: English Instructor, Crafton Hills College

Laura Ortega
Thesis Title: Azahar (pronounced Ah-ssahr)
Committee: Stu Krieger (Chair), Tod Goldberg, Dick Hebdige

Description: An immortal woman, Fatima, searches for love while maintaining her close relationship with her family-women and running the scent development component of their perfume business.

Robert Potts
Thesis Title: Half Life, Full Circle and Pour Another Story frmo the Dustbox
Committee: Juan Felipe Herrera (Chair), Allison Hedge Coke, Alba Cruz Hacker
Description:
He served as poetry editor for The Coachella Review's inaugural issue, became a Writers in the Schools (WITS) community mentor in 2008 and attended Juniper Summer Writing Institute at University of Massachusetts, Amherst the same year. Potts is a member of the honor societies Sigma Tau Delta and Golden Key International. His poetry has appeared in Solstice, Pacific Review and Starry Night Review.

Stephen Torres
Thesis Title: Unknown
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair),Dick Hebdige (Co-chair), Robert Roberge
Description: A collection of short stories examining the humor and surrealism of Modern life.

Tom Snyder
Thesis Title: An Honest Politician
Committee: Tom Lutz (Chair), Allison Hedge Coke, Tod Goldberg

Description: Broken Heartland explores the powerful influence adults have in shaping our understanding of right and wrong, friends and enemies, heroes and villans. What are the gateways to racism? If prejudice is handed down from parent to child, how does the cycle finally break? In a small wooded community, where whites and Native Americans co-exist under a veil of mutual resentment and whispered slurs, young Joey Heller is growing up under the tutelage of a local hero—his father. But when the boy secretly witnesses his father commit the ultimate crime, a son becomes the star witness in a murder trial that will either clear his father’s name, or send him away forever.
“People try and say my dad shot Freddy's dad on purpose, but they lie. My dad was a great man, maybe the best man that ever lived. He’s in heaven now, I’m almost sure of it.”
Teaching: Associate Professor of English, Mount San Jacinto College
Publications: Palm Springs Life, January 2009 issue

Jaime Soria
Thesis Title: Waterberry Tears
Committee: Stuart Krieger (Chair), Tod Goldberg, Juan Felipe Herrera

Description: Goyo has grown up facing rejection at home and at school for being effeminate; his father Ramon is his biggest critic. During his Senior year of high school, he begins to ditch school to hang out in Palm Springs. Goyo is curious to learn more about what it means to be gay. He befriends a group of drag queens and becomes close to Sasha, the leader of the group.

Goyo’s parents soon find out not only that he is ditching school and may not graduate, but also that he has been having a fling with Lucio, his sister Rosa’s husband…his father kicks him out of the house. He contacts Sasha, who lets him stay with her. Sasha is the lead performer at Club Escandalo and sneaks the underage Goyo into the club by having him dress in drag. Goyo is a natural drag queen and begins rehearsing with Sasha and her group, The Divas. Soon he is ready to perform and takes on the name of Berenize. When Cuca, Goyo’s mother, discovers he performs as a drag queen at Club Escandalo, she makes a surprise visit…

Kimberly Ussery
Thesis Title: The Fox of Cabo
Committee: Tom Lutz (Chair), Tod Goldberg, Goldberry Long

Description: The Fox of Cabo is a coming of age novel about a girl who grows up in Baja with her surfer father. Although she identifies herself as a Mexican, her appearance labels her as a gringa. When her father abandons her, she moves to Cabo San Lucas where she becomes involved with Martin, who teaches her how to seduce and rob tourists. With the love of Jose, a young police officer, and her own strength, she is able to break free from Martin and find herself.
Presenter, UC Riverside (Dis)junctions 2009: Brave New Worlds Conference

Lon Varnadore
Thesis Title: Mostly Human
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Chair), Juan Felipe Herrera, Tom Lutz

Description: 4Pollack's day has gone from bad to worse. He lost his partner to a killer then his partner's wife. Now the police suspect him of the killings. And he has to juggle a crazy ex-girlfriend who has her own vigilante ideas.

Allorah Wyman
Thesis Title: Burn: A Novel
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Chair), Juan Felipe Hererra, Tom Lutz

Description: A young woman's emotional landscape is revealed in her painful physical reactions to the world she is desperately trying to relate to. She wanders the remote desert landscape hoping to uncover truth, until her companion and she accidentally start a forest fire and find themselves on the run.

2009-2010

Alaina Bixon
Thesis Title: Failure to Float and other Essays
Committee: Tom Lutz (Chair), Tod Goldberg, Deanne Stillman
Description: A collection of personal essays, blending elements of memoir with musings on social and cultural aspects of events personally experienced. Some essays depict my involvement in the Human Potential Movement of the 1970s, while others visit the trials of a woman undergraduate at MIT when women students were few and unwelcome. A few essays stand alone.

Diane Changala
Thesis Title: Free Ride
Committee: Stu Krieger (Chair), Robin Russin, Deanne Stillman
Description:

Heidi Gibbons
Thesis Title: Across the Lines
Committee: Stu Krieger (Chair), Rickerby Hinds, Deanne Stillman
Description:

Travis Hedge Coke
Thesis Title: The Last Few Illusions
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair), Tom Lutz (Co-chair), Mary Yukari Waters
Description: Four students of St Martin Indian School, perhaps trained for it, maybe just predestined, were visited and assured that if they adhered to the cause, if they followed every new directive and kept the faith, they would graduate from boarding school, go out into life, and the world would be saved. Years later, whether still serving the cause as a military scientist finding ways to cripple with color, an indulgent world-traveling sexgod superspy and family patron, or the manager of a print shop that gets no business, they each have had to ask themselves what a saved world would even look like. How would you know the world had been saved or still needed it? If the returns on the job are good, the benefits of the service, is that goal as significant as it would be, were you suffering the whole way there? And, at what point, under what demand, what order, would establish the line you couldn’t cross to save it all? Is it assassination, betrayal, or just another long lonely paranoid day, that gets to be too much?
Teaching: Lecturer, University of Nebraska

Daryn Houston
Thesis Title: The Carp Kid’s ComeUppance
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair), Stu Kreiger (Co-chair), Elizabeth Crane
Description: The Carp Kid's Comeuppance is a short story collection that bridges reality, memoir and fantasy with characters dealing with loss, hope, romance and the weird. It's genres old, the voice new, formats borrowed; somewhat blue, but refreshing and a pleaser for all readers.

Heather Hubbard
Thesis Title: Moon Shine
Committee: Stu Krieger (Chair), Tod Goldberg, Mary Yukari Waters
Description: Moon Shine is a feature film script about a teenager, Jill, who finds herself taking care of her young, mentally disabled sister after the death of their mother. While struggling to maintain a "normal" teenage life with her boyfriend Dean, and an uninvolved father, Jill finds herself leaning on her boss, Callie, who is going through a struggle of her own. As Callie attempts to get her life back together, the presence of her unfaithful husband makes her question if she will ever be able to move on from him and be happy again. Both women are faced with life altering decisions as they strive to overcome their challenges and find their inner strength to survive.

Chris Koval
Thesis Title: The Picture
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair), Stu Kreiger (Co-chair), Joshua Malkin
Description:

Sharon Prentice
Thesis Title: I Love You in the Worst Way: A Novel
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair), Tom Lutz (Co-chair), Gayle Brandeis

Description: Though I have provided the title I Love You in the Worst Way, this is kind of a working title for an amorphous collection of vignettes, anecdotes, legends, and short stories linked to my home town of Grand Junction, Colorado. Though most of the stories do not extend past my early childhood, and many focus on my mother in various fictional guises, the entire work is shaping up to be an explanation of how the recent past of a person's family can form her character, indeed, sculpt her into the person she is today, i.e., the author, me.

Heather Riccio
Thesis Title: Puzzled
Committee: Tod Goldberg (Co-chair), Stu Kreiger (Co-chair), Mary Yukari Waters, Gayle Brandeis

Description: Puzzled is a coming-of-age novel about a thirteen year old girl, Morgan Maxle, who has to come to terms with whom she really is and where she comes from. After she accidentally kills her father, Morgan and the rest of her family move back to Blairloon, New York. It's there that she discovers she's the missing piece of puzzle. It's almost like destiny brought her to this very location and there's no turning back. She can hear people's thoughts and other people's voices from far away and has found out a family secret (one she tries to hide in the beginning). To make matters worse, she can’t escape it. There are four other teens from two of the oldest families in Blairloon who have heightened senses like she does. Denial isn't any way around it and Morgan eventually embraces her future as a sense seeker. Together they are able to solves crimes and find their "own" before the police get involved. Life will never be normal for Morgan Maxle, but then again whose life is? “I remember where I was the day my dad died. I remember exactly what I was doing, what I was wearing, my new blue jeans and a white polo top with a green zip down sweater, and where I was or rather where I shouldn’t have been, Melissa Mancini’s.”
Publications: Her short story Threading was featured on WomenWriters.net in their June issue.
Visit www.heathermriccio.com for more information.