Fen Niland
Editor in chief (2025 – 2026)
Fen Rose is acquiring an MA in English and working toward the completion of their interdisciplinary thesis that advocates a shameless embrace of joy in the face of adversity and trauma. As the Editor of El Portal, they aim to feature the creative work of a wide range of creators who aren’t afraid to examine their imperfect human experience.
Anna Carvlin
Assistant Editor
Anna Carvlin is a public health advocate, writer, and mom. She
completed a certificate in creative writing and is currently working
on a master’s in English. Carvlin’s essays and stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Defunct Magazine, South Side Weekly, and El
Portal.
Fredrick York
Assistant Editor
Fredrick is pursing a bachelor’s in communications and is currently looking at graduate school MFA programs. He has been a member of the Creative Writing minor at ENMU, focusing on the creative non fiction genre and topics such as emotional trauma and familial issues, LGBTQ identity and drug abuse. Also an occasional poet, he resides in Portales and hides with a good lyric essay or poetry collection and his weenie dog Brownie in lap as soon as he gets home from the light hub-bub of a rural working barely surviving livelihood.
Megan Arlett, Ph.D.
Faculty advisor
Megan J. Arlett has an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University where she was the creative nonfiction editor at Gulf Stream Literary Magazine and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. The recipient of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2019, Best New British and Irish Poets, The Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Third Coast, and The Sun, among others. Her first book, The Garden Party, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press.
El Portal Literary Journal 