Riley Hollars grew up near tiny Knightstown, Indiana. She graduated from Grace College in 2024 with a BA in English Literature and a minor in Creative Writing. She was also the editor of her school’s literary magazine and would love to continue using that skill set in her academic and professional lives. After honing her interests in undergrad with the modern and postmodern works of Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and Jeanette Winterson, she now wants to pursue an MA specializing in Gender and Sexuality Studies with a focus on sapphic relationships in literature. She hopes to pursue a PhD afterwards, if the time is right, but would not mind taking a break to pursue a writing career—or a career in publishing—if the opportunity arises. 

In her free time, Riley reads and writes poetry, experiments with new recipes, practices linoleum block printing, writes letters to her friends back home, and most importantly, hangs out with her newly-adopted best friend, Ernest the cat. Her favorite novel is Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and some of her favorite poems are Gwendolyn Brooks’ “To the Young Who Want to Die” and E. E. Cummings’ “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond.”