"Sometimes I invite these friends to come to my apartment to workshop each other's work.  We come from Black, white, Latino communities.  What we have in common is our sense that art should serve our communities... We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and everyone we love are burning."

- Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

Julissa is a fourth year Undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara majoring in Chican@ Studies.  She also works as Associate News Director for KCSB-FM stationed at the UCSB campus.  

From the Los Angeles area, Julissa has always aspired to become a writer, experimenting with different fields and mediums that involved writing in some form or another, ranging from the critical and academic fields to the creative and fictitious writing.  

Some of her best achievements include a short documentary she wrote and directed in 2011, Bullying, which explores the issue of bullying at her high school.  It was submitted in two Los Angeles-based student film festivals and earned honors including "Festival Favorite".   

She is currently working to apply for the Professional Writing Minor in the Multimedia Track at UCSB.