Meet Your Writing Instructor
Ryane Granados
Ryane Granados is a Los Angeles native, and she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She is also a proud LMU alumna earning her B.A in English and graduating in 2000 with the distinction of being the first ever African American Valedictorian in LMU’s history. For over 20 years, she has worked in the fields of education and fine arts, including 13 years as a tenured Associate English Professor at Golden West College. In that role, she worked both in and out of the classroom on projects designed for quality level achievement in English Fundamentals, Composition, Critical Thinking, Literature, and Creative Writing.
Her experience brings her back to LMU with a wealth of writing knowledge and a background in learning communities that promote student success. Ryane’s writing also finds its roots in her love of community, and she is inspired to write stories of survival that magnify the marginalized. Recently named the 2021 Established Writer and Individual Arts Fellow by the California Arts Council, her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Pangyrus, High Country News, The Atticus Review, Made in L.A. and LA Parent Magazine. Her storytelling has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and showcased in KPCC’s live series Unheard LA. In addition to her longstanding commitment to writing and teaching, Ryane serves as the Chapters Director for the literary non-profit, Women Who Submit: an organization empowering women and non-binary writers to submit their work for publication. Currently, she is also the co-managing editor for the forthcoming WWS anthology, Transformation. Previous WWS anthologies have been featured on the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses Year End List of Hybrid Works, Anthologies & Children’s Books.
Clinton Carl
Since 2015, Clinton Carl has been an integral part of the teaching faculty at Loyola Marymount University. His courses, such as Rhetorical Arts, First Year Seminar, and Philosophical Inquiry, are built around a pedagogy that values critical thinking as the cornerstone of effective writing and speaking. His teaching approach places particular emphasis on promoting an inclusive classroom atmosphere and advancing information literacy among his students. His commitment to LMU’s educational community extends beyond teaching as he has served in administrative roles, first as an Administrative Coordinator for the Center for Catholic Education and later, as the Program Coordinator for LGBT Student Services.
A Boston native, Clinton received his B.A. in Philosophy from Seattle University in 2013, earning both university and departmental honors. He went on to pursue his M.A. in Philosophy at LMU, receiving the Philosophy Department’s Graduate Excellence in Teaching Award. Clinton has shared his work at various academic conferences worldwide; his submission at the 47th annual Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy conference won the Graduate Writing Award.
Outside his professional life, Clinton is dedicated to giving back to his community. He volunteers regularly at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where he tutors underserved queer students from diverse backgrounds. Inspired by his interest in Hegel and German philosophy, Clinton attended the Middlebury German Language School in 2017 and later achieved a B1 level certification in German from the Goethe Institut, demonstrating proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing.
Clinton’s hobbies include reading dark fantasy books, enjoying manga and anime, playing FromSoft video games and Dungeons & Dragons, engaging in tabletop roleplaying games, and hiking. Through these interests, he nurtures his creative thinking and brings a unique perspective to his teaching and scholarly work.
Jaedyn Baker
Jaedyn Baker earned her B.A. in English Literature from California State University Dominguez Hills in 2019, where she worked as an Interdisciplinary Writing Tutor, Supplemental Instructional Leader, and Writing Associate. In each of these roles, Jaedyn supported the academic success of freshman composition students and gained valuable experience working with diverse and underserved student populations. This reinforced her commitment to social justice, equitable education practices, social-emotional learning, and community building. While at CSUDH, Jaedyn also helped establish a new campus Writing Center. Jaedyn continued her work in teaching and composition pedagogy through a Graduate Teaching Fellowship at LMU, which not only provided her with invaluable experience working with LMU’s CORE department and teaching online, but also deepened her understanding of and appreciation for Jesuit education.
While pursuing her M.A in English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition, Jaedyn gained academic advising experience as a Graduate Assistant and, later, as a Senior Administrative Coordinator in the BCLA Advising Center. Jaedyn was a proud contributor to the student-produced Lion Lounge Literary Podcast, and she has been invited to present her work on multimodal and digital writing projects at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Jaedyn has also presented on the Literature and Film Association annual panel and has been published in the journal of Philosophy & Rhetoric. Her continued research interests include feminist rhetoric(s) and pedagogy, sociolinguistics, and contemporary rhetorical theory. When she’s not teaching, Jaedyn enjoys taking on freelance editing projects.
Shonda Buchanan
Shonda Buchanan has deep roots at Loyola Marymount University, having received both her B.A. and M.A. in English with a Creative Writing emphasis in the Department of English. A Writing Instructor since 2018, Shonda started teaching Freshmen Rhetoric, Composition and Creative Writing at LMU in 2001 as a Teaching Fellow. She is also a founding board member of the African American Alumni Association. After 13 years teaching and chairing the English & Foreign Languages Department at Hampton University, and serving as a Writer-in-Residence at William & Mary College’s Creative Writing Program, Shonda is grateful to return to her alma mater as a member of the inaugural Composition Instructors Cohort for FYS.
Author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, Shonda was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a daughter of Mixed Bloods, tri-racial and tri-ethnic African American, American Indian and European-descendant families who migrated from North Carolina and Virginia in the mid-1700 to 1800s to Southwestern Michigan. Black Indian, which won the Indie New Generation Book Award for Memoir, begins the saga of these migration stories of Free People of Color communities exploring identity, ethnicity, landscape and loss. Her collection of poetry, Who’s Afraid of Black Indians?, was nominated for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Library of Virginia Book Awards. Shonda’s poetry and essays have been featured in numerous anthologies such as The Seventh Wave, Urban Voices: 51 Poems from 51 American Poets, Silver Birch Press, Art Meets Literature: An Undying Love Affair, A Def Poetry Jam, Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, Geography of Rage: Remember the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, and Catch the Fire!!! A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry, Rivendale, WhatFreshWitchIsThis?, and LongStoryShort.
An award-winning poet and educator, Shonda is a Sundance Writing Arts Fellow, a California Community Foundation Fellow, a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and Literary Editor of Harriet Tubman Press. In addition to her work as a literary activist, a teaching artist and a mentor for young writers, Shonda is the Vice President of the Board of Trustees for the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, a contributor for the LA Weekly, AARP and The Writer’s Chronicle, among her many publications. Shonda received an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. Currently writing the screenplay for her memoir, and editing She lives and writes in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.ShondaBuchanan.com.
Michael Noltemeyer
Michael Noltemeyer earned a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico. Before coming to Loyola Marymount University in 2019, he taught college composition, creative writing, technical and professional writing, and literature at the University of New Mexico, Southern New Hampshire University, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Before that, he spent a year in the dual-degree M.D./Ph.D. program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He has also spent over a decade working for Fortune 500 companies and Fast 500 startups as a freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant, in which capacity his work has been published in almost every liquor store in the country.
In addition to his teaching in LMU’s First Year Seminars, Michael works with the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, A Community Committed to Excellence in Scientific Scholarship (ACCESS), and the Center for Teaching Excellence. And when he is not busy with any of those things, he is hard at work on a novel set in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Townsend Scholz
Townsend Scholz earned his B.A. in English Literature from the University of California Riverside in 2012 and his M.A. in English Literature from Loyola Marymount University in 2018. He has been working in LMU’s CORE department as a writing instructor since he began his graduate work in 2016.
Prior to coming to LMU, Townsend worked as a peer mentor, teaching assistant, and class reader at the University of California Riverside and as an editor at an international market research firm. He has presented papers at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association’s annual conference and the LMU Graduate Research Symposium and had creative and critical work published in several undergraduate and graduate journals. Townsend’s primary research interests include 20th century American poetry, confessional poetry, musical lyric, and poetry of and about the human body. His current research involves reading the body as a means of deciphering and challenging social norms in the work of 20th century confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.
Angelique Young
Angelique Young has been teaching Freshmen Rhetoric and Composition at LMU since 2014. Her career as a collegiate educator began through a Teaching Fellowship in grad school at Loyola Marymount University, where she received both her M.A. and B.A. in English with emphases in Rhetoric, Composition, and Education. Having been in the LMU community since 2008, Angelique is thrilled to serve her alma mater as a member of the inaugural Composition Instructors Cohort for FYS.
Angelique’s passion for teaching writing extends beyond the classroom to her research interests and philanthropic endeavors. Her ongoing scholarly inquiries focus on writing pedagogies that better educate an increasingly diverse population of college writers, both in-person and online. She has been invited to present at several education-centered academic conferences, sharing her research in Speech-Act Theory applied to forbidden words in student writing, reframing the collegiate writing classroom in a digital era, and leveraging student ethos to cultivate more impactful, productive writing projects.
Further supplementing her exposure to diverse students and pedagogical constraints, Angelique has regularly taught writing workshops at the women’s prison in Corona, California since the summer of 2017. She’s currently writing an article on an educator’s lessons learned from a classroom behind bars.