Emily Masuda is the winner of the 4th Annual Stories on Stage Davis/UC Davis Fiction Contest for her story “A Good Place to Bury Things.” Masuda graduated from UC Davis in March 2017, where she studied English with an emphasis in creative writing and minored in education and professional writing. She is the recipient of the Diana Lynn Bogart and Pamela Maus prizes for fiction. In June, Masuda will attend the Skidmore Summer Writers Institute in New York with a fiction scholarship, and in the coming year she plans to write a collection of short stories based on her honors thesis, They Called Me Bug; earn her teaching credential in English; and apply to graduate programs in creative writing.
Lisa Halko will read “A Good Place to Bury Things” by Emily Masuda. Halko lives in Davis and most recently played Arkadina in “The Seagull” with The Art Theater of Davis and Lady Capulet in “Romeo and Juliet” with the Davis Shakespeare Festival. She studied acting at the State University of New York Conservatory of Theater Arts at Purchase.
Madeline Gobbo is the runner-up of the 4th Annual Stories on Stage Davis/UC Davis Fiction Contest for her story “The Conception.” Gobbo is a first-year MA student in the creative writing program at UC Davis. She is originally from Hood River, Oregon, but she most recently lived in San Francisco, where she was the store artist at The Booksmith. Her stories have appeared in Queen Mob’s Teahouse and Black Candies: Gross and Unlikeable, for which she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the illustrator of Loose Lips, an anthology of erotic fanfiction. Her collaborative fiction with Miles Klee appears in Joyland, Hexus, Another Chicago, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Territory.
Kristi Webb will read “The Conception” by Madeline Gobbo. Webb is a graduate of Northwestern University’s music theatre program. When she’s not gallivanting with Davis Shakespeare Company or directing with Merryhill Midtown, she is YouTube-ing for bilingual education. Search for her MissSenorita videos and subscribe to her channel.