Jumi Bello 

Jumi Bello is a Washington DC native who is not your traditional writer. She is a writer of consciousness. Through formal experimental narrative structure, her fiction wanders in the realm of mental illness, race, social institutions, and memory. She published two poetry chapbooks while studying history at Grinnell College. Jumi spent the majority of her twenties teaching high school in East Asia. She did a lot of things not involving creative writing: studying Mandarin Chinese, riding motorcycles, and becoming an advanced scuba diver. Her work has been supported by Catapult, Corporeal Writing Center, and Tin House Summer Workshop. At UNLV, she wants to write about the history of psychiatry, race, homelessness, the War on Drugs, and the police.