Our Team
Meet the Editors
Sam Boswell
Editor in Chief
He/They
While frying in the Santa Ana sun, Sam wishes to be caught in a rainstorm. Or better yet to be cozily tucked inside with a hot cup of tea, a good book, and the rain as ambience. On school days off you can find them with their headphones on boogying and whipping up a batch of cookies, muffins, or anything in between. He may not say it out loud, but if you receive food from him rest assured that he cares about you. From daydreaming out the window to queuing up the right music for each car ride, they are truly a distracted thinker at heart. No matter how hard he tries, the world around him will always be the basis of all his writerly inspiration. They just can’t help it! If you have sat with the crashing waves or tried to memorize the music of wind blowing through trees, you’d understand. Like any respectable child, sometimes all he needs is a good snack and a sorting game to be happy as a clam. Just don’t ask about their sleep schedule, they're trying their best. That can also apply to the puns, the many bad puns.
Bethany Kim
Editor in Chief
She/Her
Strangely enough, Bethany’s most perennial memories of her favorite books and films come from these spontaneous insights at night. It has always been this way—especially after indulging in a K-drama with the meanest ending, like Mr. Sunshine. You might find her scribbling such a thought down right after she says she is finally going to bed. She categorizes these revelations as “quotes and understandings” and will revisit said notes on another night just to make sense of it all again. Bethany isn’t exactly sure when this tradition came to be, but these homemade precepts have gently guided her creative writing journey seemingly forever. She hopes she isn’t the only one doing this. Lately, what has been keeping her up is a quote—one that has been jotted down and would surely be scrutinized again—from a new favorite novella by Ted Chiang. Let Bethany warn you that legal thrillers, video essays, and the speculative genre are particularly prone to fueling her nighttime workshops. So, here’s the latest making: “The familiar was far away while the bizarre was close at hand.” Anyone?
Eros Rivera-Garcia
Editor in Chief
He/Him
Illuminated by the too-bright light of his laptop, Eros spends his days and nights thinking about one thing. Vampires. It doesn’t help that their color palettes lean heavily on his favorite colors (particularly deep shades of red). On days he does manage to get his mind off the creatures and into a writing mood, he spends more time on pinterest carefully curating his characters’ aesthetics than he actually spends putting his fingers to the keys of his laptop. Or perhaps, he’s doing a theoretical tarot reading on his characters to decide their fates. It’s all part of the writing process–or so he tells himself. Don’t worry though, he eventually gets things done and begins the next battle. Preferably, that battle will be more imaginary and accompanied by a good few dice. Just know that if you catch him of guard, he’ll probably be reading his horoscope and sending cheesy predictions to all his friends.
Edissa Rodriguez
Visual Designer
She/Her
Edissa is scared. She doesn’t like the dark, so she self-imposed a bedtime of 9:30 in order to escape it. The thought of trying something new is horrific, so she prefers to order the same drink every time she goes to Starbucks (Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappachino). She is afraid of finishing her college applications, so instead she watches Pride & Prejudice and reads Game of Thrones. The thought of putting pen to paper is petrifying, so if Edissa says she is, that means she’s scrolling through Pinterest looking for inspiration, probably listening to Hozier.
Zara Daneva
Senior Editor
She/Her
Zara Daneva is a Senior in Creative Writing, and can usually be found putting post-it notes all over her walls or half-buried in 25 cent used books and Wikipedia articles. She loves learning about history and linguistics and bringing them to her writing—or just hoarding facts like a dragon. Sometimes, life takes a turn, and your only consolation is something truly ludicrous that happened in Ancient Rome. Figures it would be the Romans. Because of the exquisite duality of human nature, her favorite parts of writing either let her perform, or see how things work, silently yet effectively behind the scenes. You can see her work at the Get LIT poetry slam, Playfest, TedX or anywhere else that strikes her fancy, all with a panache and barely-concealed sleep deprivation that are entirely her own.
Paige Hines
Senior Editor
She/Her
Paige is a senior in Creative Writing. Most of the time, though, you can find her reading some sort of historical fiction book or writing a short story. Some of her favorite things to do are singing along at concerts (to the dismay of the people around her), baking something new, or watching a different classic film. If there’s one thing she loves to do above all, though, it’s enjoying a nice day with the people she loves.
Joy Jin
Senior Editor
They/Any
Joy is, uh, currently eating spaghetti at the time of writing, and sincerely hopes they do not spill any tomato over their keyboard. Apart from being a lover of anything including noodles (or closely resembling noodles, anyway) they also drink far too much coffee and am an avid consumer of grapefruit. Moving away from the topic of food, they’re very into writing fantasy, poetry, and dabbles in some experimental writing as well. They also are an avid enjoyer of horror manga and true crime, the Magnus Archives, and play perhaps just a tad too many video games. One last particular thing of note is that they have a strong distaste for people who walk on the wrong side of the stairs.
David Wong
Senior Editor
He/Him
David is writing this using a mildly dysfunctional computer that is almost falling apart at the seams after years of clacking away at the keyboard. He’s brought it everywhere to document everything, and his pastime of recounting trips and events by immortalizing the contents within a Google document has hindered his ability to receive emails! Beyond the confines of his computer, he enjoys carving out small reeds for his woodwind instrument of choice, oh bow…
His music taste is all over the place though, with a modern orchestral composer duking it out with groups (real and fictional) from over a century of human evolution, but he’s pretty open to any form of music, especially instrumental ones.
Jua Kim
Junior Editor
She/Her
Jua Kim is a woman of few words.
Sarina Marzbani
Junior Editor
She/Her
Watching The Brady Bunch by day and The Brady Bunch Movie by night, Sarina is a junior in creative writing with a passion for pieces that explore the human experience and emotions. She finds inspiration in almost everything, from conversations with friends to strolls through Costco, all of which end up in her notebook. You’ll usually find her reading a coming-of-age piece, binge-watching TED talks or 2000s/2010s comedies, writing (what she finds to be) the funniest Letterboxd reviews about those comedies, listening to one of her 155+ playlists, or trying new foods from (you guessed it) Costco. One way or another, it always finds its way back into her notebook.
Lukas Rau
Junior Editor
He/Him
Lukas Rau is a junior in the creative writing conservatory at Ocsa. Located in Orange County, he lives with his parents, sister, and a small furry monster that loves belly rubs. You'll often find him listening to music, whether that be whilst writing, socializing, working, or during class. He has a wide array of hobbies, including baseball, music production, reading about history, scrolling through brainrot, urban exploring, and- (of course) writing. If you ever see Lukas in the wild, ask him for a song recommendation.
Audrey Shih
Junior Editor
She/Her
Pure caffeine runs through her veins. Audrey is an avid reader (and writer!) of all things fantasy, sci-fi, and poetry. She spends most of her free time watching whale documentaries, listening to Epic the Musical, and scribbling ideas on random surfaces. She insists that anything and everything can become a poem, if one puts their mind to it. Delightful aromas in a coffee shop? Bad reception contorting an argument on the phone? A blank piece of paper? Poetry. Now, will blank paper be the greatest poem to ever poem? Probably not, but it still counts as something. Audrey really wishes the same could be true for homework...
Rebeca Yang
Junior Editor
She/Her
Rebecca has a burning passion for writing. Literally. Once, she burned her finger while cooking because she was thinking of The Blackthorn Key. Or the time she nearly sliced her finger open while cutting a mango (which, subsequently, led to a poem titled Mango). But besides physical pain and poetry, she partakes in the practice of extensive alliteration, assonance, and occasionally, performance. Other facts about her include speaking four languages (English, Mandarin, Spanish, and Taiwanese!), knitting scarfs for unsuspecting victims nearby, and playing little sonatinas on the piano.
About Us
Inkblot is the Orange County School of the Arts' award-winning literary magazine. Staffed by Creative Writing, Digital Media, and Visual Arts students and overseen by the Director of Creative Writing, Josh Wood, we produce a volume of the publication annually and review submissions of writing, visual art, photography, and music compositions throughout the school year.