Meet Jodi Angel, a UC Davis English alumni who is now a professional writer. Get to know Jodi below!

What is your favorite memory at UC Davis?

My favorite UC Davis memory is from 2000, when my mentor English Professor, Jack Hicks, pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to be a poet, or if I wanted to be a real writer and make some money. I said that I wanted to be a real writer. He told me to apply for Pam Houston's upcoming fiction writing course--the deadline was in two days. I threw together what pages of short fiction I had, and I applied. I was accepted, and she taught me everything I would learn about being a writer. I loved it so much that I applied for graduate school at UCD, and Pam was chair of my thesis--the one that would be published as my first short story collection: The History of Vegas.

What are you up to now, personally or professionally?

I made the decision to resign from my postion as an English Professor, cash out my retirement, and move myself and my four dogs overseas to the Netherlands. My daughter lives there with her fiance, and they gifted me with a granddaughter last year, so I feel like I want to be where my family is, where my granddaughter is, because I get this opportunity to be a part of her life. So, I'm moving in June, and I'm going back to writing again--to being a real writer, maybe, but if nothing else, I'll be an American Grandma in Amsterdam, and that's its own movie in the making.