Student Bios

Second-Year BA/MA Students

Alex Bilger was born in Maryland, but he (thankfully) left that swamp at the age of three, and spent most of his life growing up in Ankara, Turkey. He also spent some years in Athens, Greece, and Zagreb, Croatia. He’s half Polish on top of that, so the answer to where he’s from is always a mess. He’s a double major in the Schreyer Honors College, with his majors being CAMS and English. His focus is on fiction, specifically more esoteric stuff like fantasy and science fiction. Outside of writing, He enjoy languages (He speak Polish, is fairly competent in Turkish and Greek, and people tell him his English is pretty good sometimes), drawing, video games, and historical fencing. He’s a Turkish tea enthusiast, so he generally tend to appear wherever the most of it happens to be.

Andrea Brown is from Snohomish, WA and is a BA/MA student in the class of 2019. Her main focus is poetry, but she enjoys writing non-fiction and fiction.

As a Pacific Northwest native, she loves mountains, oceans, and trees that are green all year round. She hopes to be a travelling writer and editor. She especially wants to visit Denmark and Scotland someday to see the home countries of her ancestors.

When she’s not reading or writing, Andrea enjoys strumming on her ukulele and riding around town on her moped. She is also a shameless karaoke junkie and she will likely try to convince you to sing with her sometime.

Chloe Cullen is majoring in Broadcast Journalism and English and looking to concentrate in Fiction and Non-Fiction in the BA/MA Program. Even though she grew up in Washington, DC, her grandfather made her tour Penn State in seventh grade. As an undergrad, she enrolled in classes that would teach her how to tell stories in different media, such as podcasting and Centre County Report. She will leave Spring 2018 to Los Angeles for the Penn State Hollywood Program (& hopefully she will find inspiration for her thesis there). When she grows up, she hopes to be the lovechild of Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert, but if not, she hopes she can write something good.

Danielle (Dani) Fruehan, from Scranton, PA, is a BA/MA student in the class of 2019. Her main focus so far has been poetry, however she’s not ready to commit to one concentration just yet. Her love for character study and prose writing drives her to further explore options in nonfiction and fiction writing. She enjoys her jobs as both a tutor and workshop coordinator in Penn State Learning’s Writing Center. The only thing she loves as much as writing is helping others gain a voice through their own writing. When she’s not in class or reading for class or writing for class— basically, when she remembers she has a life besides class— you can find her sitting in trees on campus, eating pad thai, painting, or playing the ukulele/singing.

Elizabeth Hopta is a double major in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). She is currently enrolled in the BA/MA program in English with a focus in nonfiction writing. Her passions lie within community service, advocating for human rights, and writing. Elizabeth aspires to be a writer, human rights advocate, and world traveler.

Laura Nejako is from Lansdale, Pennsylvania and is a BA/MA student double majoring in English and Education. She is also a Schreyer Scholar and Paterno Fellow. In her free time, she works as an Editorial Intern at the Hemingway Letters Project. She is a writing her undergraduate thesis as a series of short cultural narratives to show how one brings their own culture into their perception of others. When not in class or at work, you can find her either trying to convince everyone to read more books by Margaret Atwood or making bad puns. Laura enjoys traveling and conquered her fear of heights this summer by rappelling down a waterfall in Brazil. Her parents are still trying to figure out how this counted as “studying” abroad.

Morgan Updyke

First-Year BA/MA Students

Mike Cescon lives in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania. He enjoys incorporating elements of fantasy into his fiction.

Nakul Grover is a first-year fiction writer in the BA/MA program from New Delhi, India. His second undergraduate major is in chemical engineering. He received the Erickson Discovery Grant for his novel that draws from contemporary political events in India and Bangladesh, tracing the lives of Rohingya migrants from Myanmar affected by climate change. He has won the Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest held by the Paterno Fellows Program twice in a row, alongside the Katey Lehman Award and Edward Nichols Award in fiction, and James Cranage Award in poetry. He is a member of the Presidential Leadership Academy and blogs weekly. At Penn State, he has served as a writer for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, a resident assistant, a Hindi tutor, and a research assistant in the surface science laboratory

Nakul is most interested in the linguistic and religious diversity of India: how geography shapes culture. He plays the piano and enjoys doing yoga, going to the gym, cooking, and reading. In the future, he hopes to study cultural anthropology in the Middle East.

Jordan McGee

Emma Ortlieb will always and forever be surprised that people want to read her writing.

Hans Park was born in Korea and has lived in the U.S. since he was a teenager. He lives in State College and is dying to get out.

Sarah Williams is pursuing two undergraduate degrees, in English and Stage Management. She grew up in the coal region of Pennsylvania, where she found inspiration for her writing and a passion for pierogis.

Lark Wilson