Alumnus Shares Thoughts on Winning Fiction Prize

2019 Maurice Prize for Fiction: Peter Shahrokh (English, M.A. ’75; Ph.D. ’83; MBA ’99)

I started my winning novel, A Wind Will Come, 30 years ago. The premise was that a professional engineer had chosen to become a chef, and he was then lured by the promise of owning his own restaurant by an ex-girlfriend if he found her lost lover. The lover was a psychopath, and that made things a little interesting. After I’d done the first two chapters, I couldn’t figure out where I was going with it. Ten years later I picked it up again and finished the last three chapters.

Deploying Bots to Thwart Trafficking and Domestic Violence

If you buy a pair of shoes online, you’ll be bombarded by companies wanting to sell you shoes. What if the algorithms that target purchasing priorities could be used for a greater good?

That’s just what Raquelmarie Clark (B.A., communication, ’18) looked into for her undergraduate research project, “Algorithmic Governance: Worrisome or Wonderful?” Clark has since founded We Always Help Each Other (WAHEO), a nonprofit that supports organizations serving victims of sex trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

Deborah Harkness

Historian brings authenticity to bestsellers about witches and vampires.

Deborah Harkness is the author of the best-selling All Souls Trilogy, about scholar and reluctant witch Diana Bishop, whose discovery of an enchanted manuscript sets loose an underworld of witches, vampires, and daemons. Among them is the vampire and scientist Matthew Clairmont, who has long been searching for the same long-lost manuscript.

Tales of Afghanistan

Debut novel captures Afghan American coming of age story.

When Jamil Jan Kochai was 12, his family traveled from their West Sacramento home to their native Afghanistan. During that 2004 trip, Kochai was attacked by the family dog, witnessed what the U.S. invasion had wrought, and soaked up stories of the distant and recent past. A decade later, he brought a short story inspired by that trip to his first graduate writing workshop at UC Davis.

Young Alums Reflect and Look Forward

In June 2019, we caught up with seven soon-to-be graduates (now our newest alumni) to ask them about what they love most about UC Davis and how well their time in and out of the classroom prepared them for their next chapter. Here are their answers.

Alumnus Robert Oden Was on the Front Lines of Change

When UC Davis students were calling for more student and faculty diversity and culturally inclusive programs, Robert Stanley Oden was on the front lines. One of only 40 African American students on campus in 1967, he was a founder of the Black Student Union, the first such group on campus, and wrote a column for The California Aggie called “The Dark Side.”

Creative Writing Alumnus Picked as Nebraska State Poet

Matt Mason (M.A., English, ’94) has been named state poet of Nebraska. Mason’s duties during his five-year term will include giving public presentations and readings, leading workshops and discussions, and providing outreach at schools, libraries and literary festivals across the state.

Lifelong Learner Earns History Degree at 84

When Marianna Daniel returned to college after more than a half-century, she faced language, health and mobility challenges. But the immigrant Californian surmounted them all to finish her second bachelor’s degree — this one in history from UC Davis — at age 84.

Fernando Purcell: Chilean Scholar of U.S. History

Clues to historian Fernando Purcell’s deep connections to UC Davis are spelled out in block lettering at his home in Chile: “ORCHARD PARK,” “DAVIS CA BLVD” and “BAUER AVE” read the American-street-style signs on his family vineyard in Colchagua Valley, about 6,000 miles from campus.